


Sins of Omission

by Kiyaar



Series: Sins of Omission [1]
Category: Marvel 616
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Civil War (Marvel), Dark, M/M, Not A Fix-It, Prolonged Partner Abuse, Rape, Secret Invasion (Marvel), Skrulls - Freeform, Suicide and related issues, Torture, Victim Blaming, irresponsible s/m
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-10-03
Updated: 2013-10-31
Packaged: 2017-11-15 13:00:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 27
Words: 155,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/527590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kiyaar/pseuds/Kiyaar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Post-Civil War, Pre-Secret Invasion AU where Steve is dead, Tony's a mess, and everything sucks. </p><p>In which Tony deals poorly with Steve's death, falls off the wagon, sees ghosts, and misses a lot. </p><p>Oh, and the Skrulls are about to invade.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> THIS STORY IS NOT ABANDONED, and I don't want to call what it's been on a hiatus, but I suppose I have to. Because it's been like 8 months. Basics of life and health are just a lot right now. Follow my [tumblr](http://besafesteve.tumblr.com) for more updates. 
> 
> This is  
> a.) not a fix-it  
> b.) on hiatus  
> c.) NOT FINISHED. there is an ENTIRE PART III coming. like, probably around 40 chapters when we're done. 
> 
> This is based on a prompt over at Avengerkink. Click for [SPOILERS](http://avengerkink.livejournal.com/1854.html?thread=22846#t22846).
> 
> Regarding warnings: Look. This is not a happy story, and it's never pretended to be anything but a protracted and painful slog through 616-verse. There's lots of rape and torture and abuse, and all the awful things associated with all of those. It's not clean, it's not feel-good, it's messy and it might not get fixed. Read the tags. That's what I put them there for.  
> Enjoy.
> 
> P.S. - I seriously advise against reading this all in one sitting.
> 
> ETA: Several people have asked me if it's ok to do 1.) fanart, 2.) fanfic, 3.) translations. YES, PLEASE, you have blanket permission. If you want to do a podfic, though, please contact me on tumblr!

* * *

PART I

* * *

 

Tony is hiding.

He was going to go, he was. Bitter and secretly terrified, perhaps, but he was going to show up.

Kooning called at 8 am. “You’re expected to be there, Director,” he’d said.  _Director._

It was just the push Tony didn’t need, that little smug edge to his voice Tony can pick out even over the phone that galls him most. It’s that Tony has a place now, following protocol, and they both know it.

He doesn’t want to be there like this. Not in this inescapable official capacity, not now that he has a rank and teleconferences with the secretary of defense and has dinner engagements with the President. He wanted to go as Tony Stark, to be there as an Avenger, to prove that he’s not – whatever they think he is. 

(Steve probably wouldn’t even acknowledge his presence.)

So Tony does what he does best, he skulks, scurries away to his ready room with Fury’s stuff still on the walls. He makes a point of telling Maria he’s not to be disturbed, he stops answering the emails that people keep sending him, asking him to comment, asking him to testify, requesting he deal with 42, inquiring about the timeline for the initiative. There are hundreds of requests for press dates. He’s never handled any of this, not for a long time. He wants desperately to forward everything to Pepper, but he can’t _do that_ anymore, so he ignores them in what’s surely an obscenely irresponsible and selfish move for a man of his station. Because he’s allowed that kind of _discretion_ now, and he’d be abusing it far more often if it gave him any joy.

But Tony can’t find it in himself to go around picking fights for amusement anymore. His face is sallow and there are deep bags under his eyes and he can’t shake the thought that he’s never exuded less authority. He hates that his talent for compartmentalization has evaporated, that now, when he needs it most, it’s gone. He wasn’t born to lead. He does, and he has, but he’s not a military man, he’s the CEO playing at being a soldier. His men don’t respect him. He can’t rouse them to action.

He can’t rouse himself. Not like Steve could.

He probably thinks Tony is a coward for not showing up, and he knows, he  _knows,_  he deserves all that and more, but he can’t. He can’t do it. He’ll deal with the fallout later.

He doesn’t need to watch. He knows how it’s going to go. He engineered this from the start, he doesn’t need it shoved in his face. It’s grown into something awful and entirely out of his control, a spectacle, and he does hate himself for that, because Steve doesn’t deserve the way this ended.

So he tells himself it’s just another rodeo, he’s done his part, he’s caught the – Steve. He’s caught Steve. It’s out of his hands now. He lets himself rock in his fancy chair, eyes wide and blank, looks out at the cloudy backdrop of his palace high in the sky, turns the mental filters up, writes new ones in his head to patch the holes he’s missed.

And then Maria Hill is bursting into his office.

Her eyes are frantic and her mouth is wrapping itself in a scowl Tony knows precedes a tirade, and all he can do is bury himself and wish she’d go away.

“What,” he says in her direction.

She just looks at him. “What the fuck have you been doing in here?”

She probably thinks he’s sulking. Shirking his duties because he’s an irresponsible fuck. She has no idea, she’ll never have any idea, Tony will always be the entitled asshole who does reckless things because it suits him, and too fucking bad if it causes her problems.

“It’s really none of your business,” he says, because he’s tired of people hating him. He’s tired. “Can you just–”

“Steve Rogers was just  _shot_. Why haven’t you been monitoring this? Christ, your brain is a  _giant fucking computer_  - ”

Tony misses the rest, because he turns the feeds back on and his brain is screaming.

_3 shots were fired, no civilians injured –_

_Captain America reportedly in critical condition on the way to Mercy Hospital –_

_The shooter has not been identified at this time –_

Steve in critical condition, Steve with three shots in him, Steve bleeding out in some stranger’s hands -

His brain stutters, but somehow he manages to shove the helmet onto his head and rockets out through the airlock. 

 

\- - -

 

Tony ducks through clouds and rolls under airplanes. He doesn’t have time to talk to ATC right now. He doesn’t have time.

Steve doesn’t have time.

He triangulates as he goes, finds the ambulance down 14th street, and he toys with the idea of landing on the roof and sliding in through the window. But if the news reports are anything to go by, Steve is in no condition –

It takes a lot to put Steve in critical condition.

He steadies himself. He’ll fly along above the ambulance and he’ll see Steve when they get to the hospital. He will, he’ll be fine, he’ll be  _fine_  -

It looks so small from the air. It’s just another vehicle from here. Inconsequential. As if it doesn’t even matter that it carries his entire world. He’s bleeding out in the back of a shitty little ambulance and there’s nothing Tony can do –

He should have been _paying attention._ He should have been – not cowering, if he’d been there, if he’d – god, he could have _DONE_ something, they’d have caught the perp now, Tony would have blown his fucking face off (no, no he doesn’t do that anymore) –

This wouldn’t have happened. Tony wouldn’t have let it happen.

 _Please, please please I’ll do anything please_ _please –_

 

\- - - 

 

Tony lands, and has to fight his way through a crowd of reporters and onlookers and medics.

“Let me through,” he intones through the voice filter.

“Sir, you have to stay –“

He disengages the armor dramatically, so they know him, so they see his face, so they know the director of S.H.I.E.L.D. isn’t fucking around.

“Fucking  _let me through_ ,” he bellows at the ER people. They do.

The gurney’s already been rolled away, but there’s blood trailing from the still-swinging ambulance doors, through the loading bay and out the double-doors, and he pushes harder than he really should around civilians and tears down the hallway. He follows it, the red shock of blood glistening all over the floor where the gurney’s been, dripping along in a macabre map laid out on the tiled floor. He runs like you aren’t supposed to do in hospitals, skids around corners, scares everyone in his way out of his path, his suit jacket billowing up behind him.  

(There’s too much blood. It flecks on the toes of his shoes.)

And then he slides to a halt before a set of double doors.

Because the gurney isn’t being rolled towards surgery, it’s not surrounded by frantic nurses with tubes and needles and masks. There’s just one nurse, and she’s wheeling it through the doors to the morgue.

There’s a body on the gurney, a blood-soaked sheet plastered to the massive form underneath it. The sheet doesn’t quite go over the head completely, and there’s a little gap where they’ve pulled it as far down as it will go, and Tony can see just the hint of hair poking out, and it’s blond, it’s  _blond,_ oh Christ, it’s blond -

_No, no, no, no no no -_

The doctor that’s been chasing after Tony finally catches up. He’s saying something to Tony, but Tony can’t listen, Tony can’t hear anything.

He can’t stop looking, at the slope of Steve’s forehead, at his filthy blond hair, at the blood that’s so dark it’s almost black drying all over his chest, at his fucking – _arm_ draped over the side, his dead fucking arm, he’s _dead –_

He can’t take it back. He can’t fix it. He can’t fucking take anything back. Can’t protest. Can’t tell him. Can’t apologize. Can’t –

Tony turns to the doctor, blinking furiously, feeling like he’s about to choke. He wants to ask how it happened, how could this  _happen_ , how can that be  _Captain America_ , how can it be that only 4 hours ago, they were yelling at each other, how can it be that the  _last thing he ever said to Steve_  was  _awful_  and petty and he didn’t mean it, how –

Tony wants to ask all these things in a level voice, but the only thing on his lips is Steve’s name.

He wonders whose name was on Steve’s when he died.

 

\- - -

 

Tony can’t look at the body right now, can’t bring himself to listen to the doctor beyond an infuriatingly clinical explanation of the shots fired (one from a sniper, two from a shooter on the ground) and how they ricocheted through Steve’s body and came to settle in his right lung and stomach and liver. He doesn’t listen to his condolences (lies) and flinches away as the good doctor reaches to grip his shoulder reassuringly.

He nods, because he thinks that’s what people do when they get news like this.

He was – he was  _just_  standing in the same space as Steve, not 5 fucking hours ago. He shouldn’t have insisted on doing the arraignment in New York, he should have kept the location classified, he should have  _been there_ , as Steve was dying –

Should have.

Tony flies back to the Helicarrier, which is now idling above Manhattan, because there’s nothing to be done at the hospital. He has people for that. Corpse Management and Recovery, because that’s what Steve is now. Steve is a corpse. Captain America is a corpse.

It starts to rain when he’s halfway to the flight deck. Maria is waiting for him when he lands, and if it wasn’t raining, and he didn’t know her better, he’d swear she was crying.

“To – Director Stark,” she says.

Tony can’t say anything. He strides to his quarters past the guards that are stationed everywhere. They’re expecting him to be Director Stark today, to field comments and do press and give orders. It doesn’t matter that there’s a hole in his chest, it doesn’t matter what he’s lost, Maria is still expecting him to do this fucking job he doesn’t want.

His metal footsteps echo off the walls of his steel fortress in the sky, and he locks the door behind him. His body doesn’t move the way he wants it to, and he leans against the door on unsteady legs. He can’t do this, there’s not – what’s the point, what’s the point of  _anything_  now, how is he supposed to direct, how is he supposed to pretend this doesn’t change anything, it’s _all wrong_ –

He can’t back out, he has to do it, still, always, it’s Tony that has to do it, there’s no one else. There’s no one else to do it, and he’s saddled with a thousand things Steve would have known how to resolve, Steve should have been director of S.H.I.E.L.D., Steve should have won, Steve should have _done it_ when he had the chance –

Steve’s shield is there, leaning against his desk, still flecked with blood and dirt.

(If he’d had it, this wouldn’t have happened.)

He runs his fingers over the dried blood – his, and Steve’s – and over the ridges, the chipped paint. It’s light in his hands, and warm. Steve’s hands held it, once.

The armor drops from his body and clatters to the floor. He lopes, with impossible effort, over to his bedroom and the door opens for him with a whoosh. He crawls on top of the coverlet, still in his suit, and wraps his body desperately around the shield.  

He’ll never talk to Steve again.

Tony decides that if this is what grief feels like, he’s never known it before.

He lets his forehead rest against the smooth rim and weeps. 

 


	2. The Body Bound

_Two months later._

 

Tony wakes, shivering between his damp sheets, the image of Steve’s body burned indelibly into his eyes.

Always the same.

It’s too early, he can tell, because the light isn’t right yet, but the re-circulated air is cold and stale and nothing happens in his bed except nightmares, so he forces himself out of his miserable nest and into the shower.

He keeps his eyes closed as the water falls on his face so he can’t look at himself in the mirrored walls.

He forces himself out of the shower and into a suit, black. It befits a Director. It’s tamer than most of the stuff rotting back in his closet in the tower. Fine. It’s winter.

He makes coffee, and drinks it while it’s still too hot. Lets it burn his throat, because it will heal.

He turns on his brain. There are 402 new messages waiting for him, most of them from people who hate him.

Tony makes himself walk out the door.

 

 

\- - -

 

Tony starts his day out by reviewing the list of pardons. Because he really is judge and jury now, he gets to decide who gets amnesty and who’ll be left to rot with super-villains.

He reminds himself that the only other person he trusts to do this is dead.

 

 

\- - -

 

Maria finds him staring off into space in an empty briefing room in the early afternoon, long after the meeting has ended. She yells at him until he responds, and Tony tries not to see his own reflection in the gleam of the conference table.

 

 

\- - -

 

He has to talk to Kooning at 4:00.

The secretary is smiling onscreen, comfortably settled behind his monolithic desk when Tony walks into his ready room. “Director,” he says, wearing his smug little grin.

“Secretary,” Tony says. He already has a headache.

“Commander Dugan has raised concerns about your allocation of resources. What’s this about giving Colonel Danvers–”

“Ms. Marvel,” he interrupts.

“–a carrier,” he finishes, ignoring Tony.

Tony sighs, because he’s been having this conversation every fucking day.

“She needs it,” he says simply. Maybe that will work.

“She doesn’t need it,” Kooning says.

“She needs a way to get her people from point A to point B. New York is a high-profile tactical target and her team gets the brunt of it.”

“I’ll take it under advisement.”

“It’s really not up to you,” Tony says, as if it will make a difference.

“Maybe you should remember who approves your budget,” Kooning says, smiling.

“I’ve cut our expenditures,” Tony says, even though he doesn’t really care, even though they both know this isn’t about money. “I’ve done better than you’ve done in 20 years.”

“Yes, and the fact you’ve managed to cut so much and still maintain the same standards of performance suggests that perhaps S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn’t need such an extensive budget as Nick Fury has led us to believe,” he says.

“I have plans for the surplus,” Tony says, because Carol needs a carrier and there’s no one else to get it for her. “You hired me to be the liason. I’ve been there, I know what the Avengers need to keep operating at the level of performance you’ve come to expect. As–“

“The 50-state initiative,” Kooning cuts in smoothly.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“The Iniative,” Kooning presses, “not the Avengers.”

Tony cannot believe this is what it’s come to.

“Yes,” he lies, “that’s what I meant.”

“I’ll take it under advisement,” Kooning says again, and Tony knows the conversation is over.

Kooning doesn’t care about the carrier, he just wants the satisfaction of getting Tony to ask his permission. Because the only reason he has to keep doing these ridiculous teleconferences is because Kooning likes to reinforce that Tony’s a kept man now. Beholden.

Tony grits his teeth and smiles, because that’s what he does now. Answers to the brass. Makes sure the world is a little more under his thumb. Lies.

It is what it is.

 

 - - -

 

Tony walks back to his quarters and the grunts salute him as he passes. It’s something he’s not sure he’ll ever get used to, and he still can’t tell if it’s anything more than mockery. They don’t like him. Maria doesn’t like him, either, because she was supposed to have this job. They’ve been through this act before, when they made him Secretary of Defense.

He was terrible at that, too.

Tony hates bureaucracy. Tony has always hated the red tape and signatures and hypocrisy of it all. He doesn’t want any part of this accountability he’s earned for himself. For them all. He wonders if he can ever really be Iron Man again, after this. He wonders if he wants to.

Tony Stark, filthy fucking hypocrite.

His feet carry him, more out of habit than out of will, and the walls blur together as he lets the outside fade and sinks into the humming web of data that lights up his brain, always. He answers an angry email from Hank, who’s been complaining about the S.H.I.E.L.D.’s implementation parameters and how they're . The president wants him for dinner on Wednesday. He declines, makes excuses. It’s what he’s paid to do, now. 

He presses his palm to the door and it opens at his touch. And, because this day can only get worse with Tony’s luck, James Barnes is sitting at his desk.

 

\- - -

 

The day is fading fast, but it’s not late enough that the lights have come up automatically, so all Tony can see is dramatic shadowing on his face and the gleam of his arm beneath the auxiliary lights.

“There’s a warrant out for your arrest, you know,” Tony says, feeling tired and mildly threatened.

“Yeah, thanks for that,” Barnes says. “How’s the new job treating you? They pay you well? You get bonuses for betraying your friends these days?”

Tony thinks he should defend himself, and doesn’t. 

“Yeah,” he says, because Bucky will always win this one, “that’s me.” He sighs and leaves the lights off. If he’s going to have his throat slit tonight, he doesn’t want to see it coming.

“Well,” Barnes says, his mouth curling in distaste, “I’m here. Make it quick.”

Tony’s just another chore, another unpleasant encounter. He closes his eyes, because they were on good terms, once, and he really has nothing, now, doesn’t he. “It’s not what I want, it’s what St – Cap wanted,” he says without inflection.

Barnes just stares out at him from the shadows.

“Look, could you just _try_ not to be an asshole about this?” _He_ ’s trying.

“That means so much, coming from you,” Barnes says acidly.

“I’m putting my ass on the line just by not _sounding the alarm right now_ ," Tony says.

“Well, you do so much,” Barnes says. His face is hard cold lines.

“Please just listen,” Tony says. “Steve wrote me a letter, and he wanted you to – have the shield, to be – and I didn’t want to call you, because honestly, I really don’t like you very much, but Clint won’t do it and no one else can throw the shield worth a damn and I don’t fucking care if I never see anyone fighting as Captain America again, but – I need you to decide.”

Barnes looks at him like he might actually be human trash.

“Who the fuck do you think you are,” Bucky says.

Tony is an almost, and no one is ever going to care about that.

Bucky – _Barnes_ would never believe about the letter. He already watched Tony lose his shit at the funeral, probably; everyone saw it, everyone thinks he’s full of shit.

“You know Steve is _dead_ because of you. Because of _you,_ Tony.”

It’s not like he was expecting amiability, but there it is, and the stab never hurts any less.

“Yeah,” Tony says in barely more than a whisper, and Barnes’ head snaps around.

“You don’t get pity for this,” he says.

“I’m not asking for pity,” Tony says. “I’m asking you to be Captain America.”

Barnes stares him down with something that’s probably disgust in better lighting.

“I’ll do it,” he says, “but not for you.”

Tony swallows. That’s fine. He’ll take it. “You’re going to have to register,” he says, because the security cameras are still on and he won’t have a chance to wipe them until Barnes leaves.

Barnes turns and laughs. “Yeah, that doesn’t work for me,” he says. “Because if you really want me to do this, I do it properly, _like Steve wanted_ , I do it on my terms. No registration.”

Tony closes his eyes. “I can’t be an accessory to – whatever you’re all doing these days,” he says quietly. “I have to, I need to make sure I’m here long enough to settle the rest of the transition.”

Barnes laughs, actually laughs out loud, and says, “The transition. You’re unbelievable, you know that? No one gives a _fuck_ about your efforts, Stark. You think you’re helping? You know what they all think of you?”

No, he doesn’t, but he can imagine. That’s fine; he knew he was going to ruin everything with this. He doesn’t need them to like him any more. It’s enough that – that they’re safer now.

“They’re right about you,” he continues. “All about covering your own ass, and fuck everyone else.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, because he is, and it’s true, what Bucky is saying, and maybe if it wasn’t, then Steve wouldn’t be dead.

Bucky looks like he wants to break his neck, but he’s a professional.

“Yeah, I’ll bet you are,” he says, and turns to leave.

“Wait,” Tony says.

He turns back.

“I’m willing to overlook – this,” he says, waving his hand absently, “just.” _For Steve_ , he doesn’t say.

Barnes walks over to him and looks down at him for a good minute without saying anything, scrutinizing. Tony knows, he knows he’s been full of bullshit and lies and he doesn’t blame him for that. He knows Bucky could easily kill him before he even knew what was happening.

“Fine,” he says, finally, his voice clipped and his eyes utterly cold. “I need his shield.” _His_ shield.

“I know,” says Tony, and presses his palm against the wall. A storage unit slides out at his touch, and he pries the shield out of its drawer, gently, runs his fingers over the fresh paint job.

He hands it to Barnes, and it takes everything he has not to hold onto it.

“Don’t come here again,” he says, as the drawer hisses back into the wall.

“Don’t worry,” Bucky says as he crosses to the airlock. “If I do, it’ll be to kill you.”

Tony stands in the dark for a while after he’s gone, because he wouldn’t mind.

He walks to his bedroom, presses his hand against the wall, and a drawer slides open. It’s there, just as he left it, blood splattered unevenly across the battered surface.

The real one.

He has no excuses left, not now that Bucky has the replica in hand. He’s been sneaking off to the tower for weeks to work on it in the early morning when the silence is too loud, when he’s too upset to sleep, when he’s crazy in his grief. He’s used up the last of the vibranium T’Challa left to do the plating on the front, he’s even cannibalized one of the suits for salvage to reinforce the back.  

It was almost a perfect copy. Bucky’s good, but he’s never been as good as Steve. He’s almost familiar enough with it to know its exact weight, almost skilled enough to notice the balance will be ever so slightly off when he throws it. Almost.

He won’t suspect. Tony’s always been a clever liar.

The real shield gleams in its drawer, and he’s overcome with the urge to rip it out and hurl it through one of his fancy windows. It’s just another slap in the face, another reminder that _you fucked up, Tony_ , another relic from a past he doesn’t deserve to remember. He he’s been greedy keeping it, grasping for comfort where there’s none to be had. It doesn’t belong here.  

It’s time he returned it. Captain America should have his shield.

Tony shouldn't have anything.

  

\- - -

 

He undresses in the half-light of a winter sunset. It feels like snow, and the window glass is cold to the touch. He leaves his suit in a rumpled pile on the floor, locks down his quarters, and flies out the airlock, the shield clasped tightly in his armored hands.

He doesn’t tell Maria he’s going.

He flies faster and faster until the wind howls synthetically in his ears and he doesn’t think anymore.

It starts to snow as he flies over Newfoundland, the arctic air heavy and dark around him.

He could die out here, and no one would ever find him.

  

\- - -

 

It’s a clear night in Greenland when he finally touches down at the spot. He’s never noticed before, he’s never been here under good circumstances, really, but it’s rather lovely, this juncture of ice and water.

Namor is waiting for him when he lands, arms crossed and legs set wide. Tony opens his mouth and wills himself to mend fences, just so he can get this done, so he can give this back to Steve, but Namor is already striding over to him.

“Why didn’t you tell me _?_ ” Namor snarls.

Tony can’t keep up with everyone he’s been pissing off.

“I came as soon as I could, you know that,” Tony says, his mouth spooling out platitudes. It’s a lie, of course. He’s been avoiding this for months, but Namor doesn’t care about Tony’s feelings anymore than any of them do, now. “Barnes just showed up a few hours ago. I’m doing the best–”

“–no, Stark,” Namor growls. “Why did you not tell me about the _body_?”

“The –“ Tony stops. “The body? Steve’s body?” He tries not to choke on Steve’s name.

“Don’t feign ignorance, it’s unbecoming–”

 “I’m not _feigning ignorance_ , what are you–?” Tony tries to scan, but Steve is too far down, and the feeds give him static and something that’s probably whale song.

Shit.

“What’s wrong with – the body?” Tony asks, trying to tamp down on the panic he feels creeping into his voice.

Namor searches his face, distress and anger and hatred written in his eyes. He must find no trace of treachery in Tony’s, because his face softens ever so slightly into a frown, and his expression loses some of its ferocity.

“There’s something foul at work here,” he says, crossing his bare arms.

“I thought you said he would be safe here,” Tony says, and he can’t keep the accusation out of his voice, can’t help feeling betrayed, because he thought this was it. That this was the last time he’d have to feel this raw pain, the immediacy of this grief.

“He is,” Namor says simply.

“Then what, just, show me,” says Tony. He grips the shield tighter and follows Namor out into the water. 

They dive down together into the black. Tony lets the water carry him in Namor’s wake, lets the fathomless darkness blanket him. He holds the shield in front of him like a talisman to ward off the evils that must lurk in the deep, but he knows it’s silly.

There’s no one down here.

It’s not such a bad place to spend eternity, he thinks. It’s deadly calm, and hopelessly dark, secreted away from the world.

The light from his suit is dim, increasingly swallowed in the blackness, but what little there is glints off of ice shelves and rock formations. Occasionally Tony sees the sheen of some animal’s wet flank sliding through the dark water, but it’s only ever a glimpse.

Tony feels like he’s trespassing. He shouldn’t be here.

Namor leads him past what looks like dead coral from eons ago when these were warm waters, past the jagged mouths of underwater caves, past spires of rock and impossible ice that gleams like polished glass.

And then he’s sure his heart stops for a moment, because they round a bend in the trench and there it lies, glimmering on the ice. Steve’s casket has settled in a little valley bordered by a sharp rise on all sides. The embossing on the lid catches the light, and Tony allows himself to raise the lumen output.

The casket was opaque when they buried him, a kind of iridescent green, but the outer coating has been gently polished away in places by the currents and possibly helped along by Namor. Now it’s distinctly clear in patches, and Tony can see the blue of Steve’s scale, the red of his gloves folded over his heart. Water has creeped into the casket through a hairline fracture in the lid, the suit informs him. It’s filled it up, suspended Steve’s hair in an eerie crown around his face.

He could be sleeping.

“What’s wrong,” Tony asks, looking away. “It – he looks fine to me,” he finishes quietly.

Namor turns to him, suspended in the water without treading.

“Look closer,” he says.

Tony looks, allows himself to lay a hand on the glass. He rubs at the surface, and a bit more of the frosting on the glass flakes off at his touch.

And then he sees it.

There’s what would be a gash, rising above Steve’s collar, where the skin has split and fallen away. And once Tony sees it, he can’t not – a piece of skin on his hand worn thin, worn through, a patch on his neck disintegrating.

Something glinting underneath, dulled by the faintest dusting of red.

Metal. Rust.

A Machine.

He buried a machine.


	3. Ghost in the Machine

Namor floats, infuriatingly silent, while Tony gapes. Extremis can’t tell him anything beyond the fact that the thing lying in that casket is not Steve Rogers. It’s an LMD, one of the recent models that Fury was so fond of.

“How long have you known about this,” Tony says.

“Not long enough,” Namor says. “Find him. You owe him that much.”

He swims away.

Tony remembers why he can’t stand Namor.

“Thanks,” he says absently to the trail of bubbles he’s left behind. “I’ll just deal with this, then.”

He takes the shield with him as he rockets up through the swirling blue-black, lets the Extremis buffer him against the pressure changes – uncomfortable, but he doesn’t have the patience for a slow ascent right now – and takes to the skies, laying in a course for the Helicarrier.

It’s not enough that Steve is dead, he’s not even properly dead now. His body is somewhere else, and there’s always going to be a seed of foolish, misplaced hope, in the back of his mind, that  _maybe. Maybe_  there’s a chance. Maybe he gets another  _chance–_

But Tony isn’t supposed to get another chance, he’s supposed to suffer for this chain of events.

He doesn’t want to, but he has to watch the tape, has to gather evidence, has to solve the puzzle. It’s not difficult to find the footage, he’s had it queued for months - it’s just that he hasn’t been able to bring himself to watch it until now.

He watches as Steve’s life bleeds away on marble steps, as Sharon kneels over him. He watches Steve’s lips form words that aren’t meant for Tony. He watches as they heft his enormous body onto a gurney that looks pathetically inadequate, watches as he’s bundled up and driven away.

He runs it again, but Steve is definitely bleeding.  

Life model decoys don’t bleed.

 

\- - -

 

_Tony is sick of waking every morning with his pillowcase damp, sick of shivering and curling under the sheets, sick of rocking himself until he stops shaking with sobs._

_He cannot spend another fucking night in this enormous room with no one to talk to._

_He takes the Audi, because it looks like a normal car, and actually drives away from the Helicarrier base, through rush hour traffic, to the James, because he owns it._

_He’s wearing Gucci, but he hasn’t shaved in a few days, and there’s red rimming his eyes. Still, he’s Tony Stark, and his face is enough, most days, no matter how haggard, so he waltzes up to the desk and takes off his sunglasses. The woman snaps to attention, and he’d be indifferent, once, and later, flattered, but right now he’s just grateful he doesn’t have to open his mouth to say anything._

_They rush to accommodate him, asking if he’ll be staying long (he won’t), if he has any bags (he doesn’t), if he needs anything (nothing they can give him)._

_The suite is as cold and impersonal as he remembers, decorated in creams and whites and dramatic reds. Bold. Modern. Lonely._ _The clunk of the door slotting into place echoes off the too-high ceiling. He sits, very carefully on the edge of the bed, and cycles through his contacts in his head. He wishes something would change his mind, but he’s lonely, and he aches deep in his bones with this grief that’s latched onto his soul._

_He makes the call._

_The woman who answers sounds younger than he remembers, but she’s professional and discreet, and he’s mildly pleased that nothing has changed since he used their service years ago at MIT. He wasn’t rich then, but his father was, and his name was enough to get him in the door. If she knows who he is when he gives her his account number now, she doesn’t let on. She probably doesn’t care. He’s just another exorbitantly rich, faceless man._

_He asks for broad shoulders, blond hair, blue eyes. Athletic. She asks if he’d like to give exact specifications – he’s a very important client, even as high-end of a service as they are - and he’s ashamed that he gives them – 6’2”, 240 lbs. He wants to say, “wholesome,” but that sounds juvenile and he’s got a reputation to maintain, and it doesn’t adequately describe what he’s looking for, anyway. An hour, she says, and he thanks her._

_Tony reclines on the bed for a few minutes after he’s hung up, wondering what he’s done._

_In what he’ll come to think of as a pre-meditated decision, Tony pours himself a glass of bourbon, because if he’s going to do this, he’s going to do it._

_He throws it down. There's no one to knock it out of his hand this time._

_When the knock on the door comes, Tony answers, 3 glasses in. He’s gorgeous, chiseled jaw, bright blue eyes, blond hair in gelled disarray. He’s slightly younger than Tony. He has a kind face._

_His name is Chris, it turns out, and he tries to arrange himself under Tony on the bed when they’re ready, and Tony knows how this works, knows he’s all stretched and lubed and ready to take whatever Tony gives him, but Tony runs his hands over him greedily, nestles his face into his neck, whispers close against his ear._

_“I want you to fuck me,” he says raggedly. “Hard, I want you to be rough, I wanna feel it tomorrow.”_

_Chris looks momentarily surprised, but he’s adaptable, he has to be. Tony’s sure it’s not the first time he’s had such a request, he’s used to servicing his clients however they need him to, and after a little while, he folds Tony in half and pounds into him until he’s gasping for breath._

_Tony closes his eyes to mask his tears, moans a little louder, draws Chris in a little tighter with his calves, and thanks a god he doesn’t believe in that Steve can’t see him now._

_\- - -_

 

When Tony gets back around midnight, the Helicarrier is in the water, 30 miles offshore. He drops the shield in the airlock before landing more forcefully than he probably has to on the tarmac.

Maria is standing at the edge of the landing strip, looking absolutely pissed.  

“Report,” Tony says automatically, because they were in the air when he left.

“I’d like a word, Director Stark,” she says. Always so angry with him.

He’s got a lot to answer for, because he didn’t follow protocol and he’s been brushing too many engagements lately, so he sighs and takes the helmet off in hopes that she’ll think he’s less of an asshole this way.

“My office,” he says, eyeing the grunts lined up on the landing platform. “Give me five minutes.”

He runs over the footage again while he walks back, but it’s there, it’s Steve, undeniably shot and bleeding out. It had to be the hospital, then, between the time he was unloaded from the ambulance and Tony – when Tony arrived on scene.

He’s wading through footage from 14 different security cameras within a one-block radius when Maria strides into his office.

He does his best to engage.

“Report,” he says again.

“You missed a hell of a party,” she says icily. “While you were gone, we got hit with a nasty little transmission that wrecked half our active protocols. It’s a fluke we even picked it up on sensors, someone made it look like civilian chatter, but then everything went to shit for a little while. Turns out there was actually an anomalous waveform embedded in the transmission, and about 15 seconds after it registered, we starting having random systems malfunctions – turbine 3, generators A, E, and F, and some of the higher nav functions crapped out.”

Just what he needs.

“What kind of malfunctions,” he says, tapping into the logs even as he asks.

“Nothing crippling or even particularly damaging,” Maria says, “but I put us in the water because the disruptions were unpredictable. The transmission subsided about 2.5 hours ago, but we’re still getting flare-ups. Not as widespread now, but they’re still there. They’re almost like electrical surges, instruments don’t respond as they should, levels spike without input, that sort of thing.”

She sits down across from him.

He replays the pulse in his head, and it vibrates through his skull, an unpleasant resonance that makes him feel like he’s got a bad hangover.

That’s interesting.

He sees what she means – it’s similar to an EMP, but it’s much weaker and far more elegant. It doesn’t match anything he’s got stored in his brain. He’ll have to work on it.

“Actually, they’re just as widespread,” Tony says. It’s like looking at microfractures in a hull, but instead they’re electrical and they’re everywhere. “There are more now, in fact.”

“What? That can’t be right, I just –“

“Trust me, my sensors are more advanced than anything we have aboard until they finish the upgrades,” Tony says by way of explanation. He knows it sounds flippant, but it’s true, the current version of his brain is better than his old tech.

He runs over the incident reports briefly. They were random, Maria was right – there’s documented anomalies in weapons, nav, comm, backup propulsion, everything, on every deck. There’s no pattern his brain can determine, it just seems like a feeble, protracted seizure of the ship itself. He needs more data.

“I just initiated scans on all the servers and the mainframes, I’ll keep monitoring the live results. Did you put people on the waveform?”

“Yes,” she says. “Maya and Sal are working on it as we speak.” She’s never liked the way he brought his strays with him.

“Fine,” Tony says. He can’t keep the fatigue from his voice anymore. “Recall any squadrons that are out right now – training missions, anything non-essential - let’s head back to drydock.”

Maria blinks.

“Is it that serious?” she says.

Tony doesn’t know what to think, because he’s tired, and he knows he should, but he doesn’t  _care_  about the Helicarrier as much as he cares about what happened to Steve right now.

“I don’t know,” he says, “but it’s widespread and random enough and  _unknown_  enough that I want to run diagnostics, and I’d rather do it docked than sitting out here with no support. We’re not running any active ops, we’re only 30 miles out. We can run patrols from shore just as easily as we can from here. We’re still at blue alert, correct?”

“Yes,” she says.

“Fine. Do that, then. If we need Air Force support to fill in the gap, go ahead and patch Kooning through to me. I can help do patrols if we’re stretched thin, I’d cover more ground anyway –“

“No, you can’t,” Maria says. “You’re Director, and clearly we need your superior brain for analysis on this, not flying around whenever you feel like it, which brings me to my next point,  _Sir.”_

“Before you say anything,” he says, “I had a very good reason for not telling you –“

“I don’t fucking  _care_ , you can’t keep doing this. You could have run diagnostics two hours ago and maybe even figured out what this was by now if you’d  _been here_ , at your post. Doing your goddamn  _job._ ”

Of course.  

“Maria, that’s what I have  _you_  for,” he says, his voice flat. “You’re my favorite deputy director –“

“What the  _fuck_  is wrong with you?” she says, slamming her hand down on the desk. His pen jumps.  “You think this is a game, Stark?”

“No,” he says. “No, I don’t think it’s a game,” because he’s trying, he is, and he’s worn thin, and if he hasn’t proven by now that he’s dedicated, if people still don’t think he takes it seriously after he’s stood by and watched his friends desert him, then he can’t do anything more. “You’re dangerously close to insubordination, deputy director,” he says with a quirk of his mouth.

“Oh, save it for Dugan,” she snaps. “You’re not just Iron Man anymore,” she bites out angrily, “you have responsibilities. You can’t just take off whenever you feel like it, Tony, you have to fucking  _lead._ ”

She called him Tony, and it might be the most confirmation he’s had in months that he’s still a human being.

“I  _am_ leading, Maria. We’re doing fine, we’re doing better than fine. The DOD loves me,” he says darkly.

Maria glares, and he knows she’s not going to let it go.

“Did you follow me,” he asks quietly, neglecting to address her other concerns.

She looks at him, long and steady, for a minute, as though she’s seriously considering spitting in his face.

“No,” she says.

“No,” he echoes, averting his eyes. He twirls his pen and sighs.

“I went to see Namor,” he says. It’s all the explanation she’s getting.

“Namor is unregistered,” she says.

“I’m aware,” he says, irritated.

“You  _have_  to stop doing this,” she says. “You’re not Fury, Tony. You have to be squeaky clean.”

Tony looks up at that, because he would have bet money that Maria couldn’t wait to see him go. Dugan certainly makes no show of hiding it. He has no illusions, of course – he knows why Kooning’s put him here, knows he has to toe the line. He sighs.

“You should know me better than that. I took precautions –“

“That’s not the point. It’s illegal, and you’re the director of the most important intelligence agency on the planet. You’re our new poster boy for all that’s legal and right. Or have you forgotten?”

He hasn’t, and she knows it. That was low.

“I know why you’re here,” she says quietly. “I know why you took the job. I know you don’t like being here, and I can’t say I love it either. Fury was a hell of a lot better than you, and he came with a lot less baggage. But if you don’t want everything that’s happened in the past year to be a waste, you need to fucking check yourself, Stark. You need to do things by the book, you need to pay attention to protocol, you need to stop being a cowboy so you can do what you set out to do.”

It might be the nicest thing she’s ever said to him. She looks at him, and waits.

“You’re not going to tell me anything else, are you.”

Tony wants to, wants to pawn this burden off onto someone else, wants to trust her, wants.

Wants a friend.

“No,” he says. “Dismissed.”

Tony sits for a long time after she leaves, going over the wave patterns, but he’s not making any progress, and he’s tired and sleep-deprived and there’s a headache building behind his eyes, so he shucks his suit and climbs into the shower.

He goes over the footage of the courthouse crime scene, the audio of the ambulance’s interior, one more time before he falls asleep, just to make sure he hasn’t missed anything, but Steve is still bleeding, still gasping for air, still dead on arrival at the hospital.

Well, there’s that.

He doesn’t have to worry about that second chance.

They wanted his body, then, but for what? Tony’s mind goes to dark places, because he can’t imagine anything other than ritual sacrifice. Cults, maybe. It’s fucking ridiculous, but it rankles his blood because Steve deserved his peace, whoever’s taken his corpse.

Tomorrow, he thinks, he’ll fix this, he’ll fix the Helicarrier, he’ll fix.

Tony falls asleep with a headache and dreams that Steve is drowning him in a shallow pool.

In the early morning, when he wakes, he doesn’t remember what he dreamt of, only that it was awful. 


	4. Creative Outlets

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Torture in this chapter.

Tuesday is a fucking nightmare.

Apparently the Defense Department is taking this little incident as a terrorist attack, so the Alert Level goes back up to yellow and Tony suddenly has stacks of paperwork to do. His attempts to placate Kooning are less than successful, and apparently “it’s really not as dire as you seem to think,” is the wrong thing to say to the Secretary of Defense, because then the alert level gets bumped up to Orange and Tony is almost certain it’s just to spite him.

It turns out there’s not actually any systems damage, but the entire ship is misbehaving, and the best they can do is reboot and wait for more diagnostics to run, which Tony knows will take hours. He feels like his brain is overheating. It may be. Eh. He’s had worse.

Tony ignores the messages that are piling up far too fast to keep up with, and pinpoints the source of the transmission to a half-mile radius somewhere in the vicinity of the Baxter Building. Reed has no idea what it is, and he didn’t pick it up at the time, but he promises to work on it before signing off abruptly. His equipment should have registered something, but Tony takes it as confirmation that whatever it was, it was meant for the Helicarrier. Dugan’s still crawling down his neck to stop fucking around and manage the overhaul, so he finally throws up his hands after an hour of fruitless analysis and sends it down to Maya.

Instead of overseeing repairs and coordinating with the D.O.D. like he’s supposed to, Tony makes Maria do it and takes the opportunity to run away to his office for a few hours so he can hack some security footage.

It’s slow going, and every time he switches processes his head throbs. There’s not much for him to work with, because Mercy General deletes theirs monthly and of course Bucky didn’t show up until two days ago. So he buckles down and sweeps dozens of shitty low-res street cams, traffic cams, miscellaneous small businesses’ feeds. Most of them have already been erased, and the ones that haven’t are grainy and temperamental. Tony can do a lot of things with security footage, but there’s still no substitute for quality source material. After his 7th dead end, he decides to fuck it and hacks the hospital’s servers manually.  

He finds what he’s looking for, half-rewritten and fragmented beyond all reasonability, but it’s there, so he sucks it up and dives in.

It takes him almost an hour to restore it to the point where he can see the ambulance arrive and the medics scramble out. They wheel Steve out the back and they’re not doing chest compressions anymore, so they must have already called it. The driver fucks off to another ambulance, and one of the medics scowls and heads out in the direction of the bay doors, probably to fend off the press. He doesn’t return, and his partner, a petite blond woman, goes about signing charts and rolling Steve down the hallway to the morgue.

He swears, because he hasn’t even touched the hallway feeds yet. It turns out it’s not as badly fragmented, though, and he skips dinner and ignores two calls (one from Carol, one from Maria). There’s a dull pounding in his ears, but he presses on, and it pays off just after he goes off-duty for the day.

The two-man team obviously has military training – it’s the way they walk, the way they scan, the way they move a little too purposefully through the hospital. They skulk into the hallway about 9 hours after they put Steve away in a drawer, rolling along a gurney with what is presumably the LMD covered with a sheet. Their faces are uncovered, and Tony is pleased that they’re sloppy. They move Steve’s huge, pale body out of the drawer and onto the stretcher easily enough, and the LMD goes back in the drawer with the toe tag attached. It looks just like him, down to the fabricated gunshot wounds, and Tony wonders why the hell they haven’t been detected, because who the fuck misses 240 pounds of Captain America being rolled down a hospital corridor?

Tony realizes that if he’d let them do an autopsy, they would have figured it out. Really, there’s a hundred ways he could have prevented this. He should have assigned the body its own security detail.

At least he has faces to go by now, and he sets up the trace and pushes it to the back of his mind. The room spins briefly when he stands up, but he has to go check on Maya’s progress, so he swallows down a handful of ibuprofen and makes his way down to D-level.

 

 

\- - -

 

Maya is usually thrilled about any puzzle that takes her longer than 30 minutes to solve, but when Tony comes into the lab, she’s scowling at him.

“Why am I working on this?” she says without preamble.  “I splice genes.”

Tony sighs. “Because I asked you to,” he says, running a hand over his face. “I’m swamped, I need you to handle it.”

“Yeah,” she says, “I’ve noticed, Maria’s been haranguing me all day, she thinks you’re hiding down here.” Of course she does.

“I was doing stuff,” he says. She glares at him. “What? Where the hell is Sal?” Tony fidgets, pinches the bridge of his nose, trying to fend off the pressure behind his eyes.

Maya rips the glasses off her face and throws them down on the desk.

“How the fuck should I know? He’s probably smoking on C deck. And no, Jesus, I’ve only been on this for like 2 hours, I would have called you.”

“Fine,” he says, turning to leave. She’s pissed about something, and he can’t handle the volume of her angry voice right now. He knows when he’s not wanted.

“I’m leaving,” she says. “As soon as I figure this out, I’m going to leave.”

Tony spins around.

“What? You can’t leave,” he says stupidly, because it’s true. He’s personally responsible.

“I can, actually,” she says.

“No you can’t,” he says, “You have nowhere to go. Back to prison? Because that worked out so well last time.”

“There are people willing to vouch for me,” she says.

“No there aren’t,” he says, “if there were, that’s where you’d be.”

“Yes, there are,” she says. “People with ranks higher than yours. We both know this isn’t sustainable. No one here takes me seriously as a scientist, they all think you’re just keeping me around to be your personal physician-slash-whore.”

“What, I’m not - that’s not what everyone thinks.”

“Yeah, it is, there’s pictures of us in tabloids.”

“What? There are not, Maya, please,” he says.             

“It’s what I should be working on, Tony! It’s what I  _was_  working on until you came along and scrambled yourself and made me look bad.”

“Ok, that’s not fair,” he says. “Extremis was your –“

“Oh, it’s not fair,” she says. “You know what’s not fair? Inviting me to  _move in_ , to  _live with you_ , and then not coming home for two weeks.”

“There were extenuating circumstances –“

“There are  _always_  extenuating circumstances with you, Tony!” she yells, her voice echoing off the metal walls, and he’s sure she’s about to throw something at him. “I know who you are, I’ve heard it all, Director of Fucking S.H.I.E.L.D., and you won’t even sign off on my research. We both know the only reason I’m here is so you can keep an eye on me, so you can fuck me when you feel like it, but that wasn’t so bad, really, until you started ignoring me and put me on shitty projects that the goddamn  _temps_  could manage!”

He should have prepared a contingency plan. Routine, he thinks, predictable. Hating him is apparently the fashionable thing to do, these days. It’s true, what she’s saying. He’s been shitty about this, and he’s spent enough nights alone in the penthouse to know that it’s awful. If he’s honest with himself, though, he hasn’t missed her.

If he’s honest, she was always just a body that wasn’t Steve.

“Maya, look, ok, I wanna talk about this, but I have to, I just don’t have  _time_  right now – ”

“Nope,” she says, “we’ve talked. That was us talking, just now. I’ll finish your damn EMP analysis tonight and I’m leaving tomorrow.”

She turns her back on him and makes a point of opening the doors manually.

Tony wants to argue with her, but he doesn’t have the time or the energy to do it. Maya is dangerous, and he knows he has to manage her, but it’s so much easier to just walk away. Besides, if what she says is true he’s lost control of the situation already. He knows what they want her for, knows she’ll weaponize Extremis on the government’s dime somewhere in a secret lab.

He thinks that a few months ago he cared, but there’s nothing, no righteous anger welling up inside him, no protest he can voice with any conviction.

Beautiful Maya, with her brains and her eyes that sparkle and her mind that thinks up terrible, wonderful things. Clever Maya, who saved and ruined him in one fell swoop. Sometimes he wishes he hadn’t gotten to her in time, that Mallen had split his skull properly, that he’d let himself bleed to death as a man instead of a machine.

 

\- - -

 

He’s halfway through his 3rd briefing of the day when NGI finally puts out.

One of the guys is Robert Blair, and he’s done time twice, both times for doing Hydra’s dirty work. Tony really isn’t surprised – they were the bane of Steve’s existence while he was alive, so it should only figure that they’d want his body for something ill-advised now that he’s dead. Steve always beat them back with a goddamned red white and blue stick while he was alive.

There’s no one to do that, though, now that he’s dead.

He waits for Dugan to finish talking about expediency, but only barely, and he elbows past Maria (who’s talking at him again) and half the Alpha squad before he climbs the steps to the landing strip.

 _12 Lakeview Terrace,_  the HUD blinks at him.

Tony is running on bitterness and rage and despair ignored for too long, so he raises his arms and the armor comes flying out of a hatch and wraps around him, and then he’s off.

Tony can beat them off. He can do that, at least, for Steve.

 

\- - -

 

It’s snowing in Erie, Pennsylvania, and Tony lands at the edge of a lake just as the sun is setting. It’s bad for cover, but he’s not really planning to be subtle about this anyway. Lakeview Terrace winds next to lonely snow-covered dunes, up to a dilapidated cabin set a little ways up from the beach, the roof sagging under the weight of too much snow. It looks like it could have been a vacation shack once, for fishing and other solitary lake country pursuits, but it’s fallen into disrepair, and the only indication that it’s not completely abandoned is the dull light of a TV filtering through the windows. It must be the only building Tony’s seen for miles.  

Thank fuck, because Tony doesn’t have the patience to do this quietly or cleanly.

His armored feet sink heavy in the snow as he moves around the cabin. He scans it, and finds it empty except for Blair (93% match for physical characteristics), and he realizes he’s eager for this. He feels it now, as he plots with his second skin, his higher brain, the recklessness pulling at his edges. The rational part of his brain wants to say it’s only because he’s been pushed so far and stretched so thin and made to ruin everything he’s ever built, but Tony knows better.

He’s always liked this bit.

Steve would reign it in, Steve would walk away, Steve wouldn’t put himself in the situation to begin with. But Steve isn’t here, Steve is dead, and that’s why Tony is here, because this jackass helped steal his body.

He blasts a hole in the door, because he’s always been one for the theatrical.

Blair is well-built, not as big as Tony, but compact, well-muscled. His hair is cropped short, and it’s gelled up – for whom, Tony’s not sure, there’s no one for miles – and there’s just a hint of well-tended-to stubble on his jaw. He’s sitting in a sagging armchair, a bottle of beer halfway to his lips when Tony clamps his armored hand around his upper arm and drags him out of it, pushing his face into the faded hardwood.

“What the fuck,” Blair says, choking on a mouthful of beer. “You’re Iron Man.”

Tony smiles behind the faceplate. “Yeah, I am.” He twists Blair’s arms up behind his back. He struggles a little, wriggles under Tony’s hands.

He’s not drunk, just caught off-guard – sloppy, Hydra really doesn’t hire people on the top of their game anymore – but he’s got an AR-15 propped in the corner and a knife strapped to his thigh. He’s probably got military training, then. Fine. Tony’s got superpowers now, and retribution to see to.

“What  _is_  this,” Blair says, his eyes working wildly as he tries to see Tony’s face.

“You’re one of the fucks who stole Captain America’s body,” Tony says. “You’re going to tell me everything. Who hired you. Where you took him. Why you took him. Who your scumbag partner was. Who the  _fuck_  you paid to look the other way.”

“Fuck you,” Blair says with a laugh. “Arrest me, then. Hydra’s great about paying bail.”

“I don’t think you understand me,” says Tony conversationally, and it’s running through him now, and he’s less interested in compassion and entirely too ready to deal this man some pain. “I’m going to break every bone in your hand, one at a time, until you tell me what I want to know.”

“You can’t,” says Blair, and he’s running his mouth, he’s not even nervous. “I know who you are, man, you’re the fuckin’ Director of S.H.I.E.L.D., you can’t just beat people up, it’s against the Geneva convention and shit –“

“Speak up,” Tony says, and wrenches his arm back harder. 

“I’m not  _resisting_ ,” he protests, “Come on, man, I’m not even fuckin’ fighting, OW, you’re hurting me-“

Tony rips a lamp out of the wall to tie his hands with the cord. “Don’t worry, we’ll fudge the incident report later. Because you know what, Robert? You picked bum-fuck nowhere to hole up. I can do whatever I  _want_ , and I won’t even leave any fingerprints. I’m just that good.”

Tony sets him in one of the kitchen chairs. “Go on,” he says.

The guy laughs, and that’s it.

Tony reaches around and snaps his right thumb.

Blair howls and curses.  

“Yeah,” Tony says, “broken fingers, very painful. Are you ready to stop wasting my time?”

“Fuck,” Blair spits, “you S.H.I.E.L.D. bastards are fucking pieces of work, you know that –“

Tony squats on his heels and wraps his hand around Blair’s other thumb.

“You done?” Tony asks.

“I’m –“ Blair is panting, his voice strained. “I’m - more worried about  _that bitch_  coming after me than you,”

“Who,” Tony says. Blair grits his teeth and shakes his head.

“Look, man, I know –  _FUCK,”_ he yells, jerking in Tony’s grip, because Tony’s just snapped his other thumb.

He raises the faceplate.

“I’m gonna make sure you can’t use your hands for months,” Tony says. “Because you just kinda piss me off. Why,  _why_  are you giving me such a hard time about this? Hydra doesn’t  _care_  how long you hold out, you’re what, an independent contractor? You’re small-time, buddy.”

“She’s gonna kill me once she finds out I’ve told you what I know,” he forces out.

“So you do  _know_  things,” Tony says, “just to clarify.”

Blair glares at him.  

Tony snaps one of his ring fingers, and doesn’t feel anything at all. Blair screams.

He’s been on the receiving end, he knows what he’s doing, but he looks at this man in front of him with his face screwed up in pain and he just doesn’t care.  

 _You have new powers you don’t understand,_  Steve had said.

This should be harder than it is.

“Tell me,” Tony says. “Who.”

Blair looks torn now, and his breath is coming in short gasps that fall from his open mouth. He looks terrified, but of Tony or Hydra, Tony isn’t sure. He wraps two gold fingers around Blair’s wrist, and squeezes.

Blair breathes out a moan of pain and Tony squeezes a little harder.

“Christ, ok, god, she wanted it for her fucking monster father, I don’t know, you’re right, ok, I just contract with them sometimes through Hydra–“

“Who,” Tony snarls, “who wanted it?”

“The crazy fucking german bitch. I wasn’t gonna do it, she’s batshit insane, but she offered me a lot and all I had to do was steal a fucking body, ok.”

Tony’s brain fails him for a moment, and he’s left looking stupidly at Blair for a moment, because there’s only one person that could be.

“Sinthea Shmidt?” he says, when he recovers. Blair nods furiously. “Who let you into the hospital?”

“She did,” Blair gasps. “She was there, she was a nurse, she signed us in, I swear to god.”

“What does Sinthea Shmidt want with Steve Rogers’ body,” Tony says, dreading the answer.

“I told you, she wants it for her father, I don’t know, I don’t  _know_ , please don’t break my fingers again, I got a job lined up and it’s gonna be hard to hold a pistol after this already, just –“

“You’re not doing any more jobs, asshole. What about her father,” Tony says, his eyes deadly cold. “Where was he headed, tell me where they’re going, what are they doing with the body?”

“I DON’T KNOW,” Blair says, “I don’t know, somewhere in Europe, it’s not my job, I just had to get it to the first drop point, someone else was in charge of getting it out of the country. I don’t know what they need it for, I don’t know, fuck!”

It’s not good enough, it’s never challenging enough, there’s always another fucking thing to worry about, always someone ruining what’s supposed to have been settled.

Tony drags himself up from the floor and surveys his victim. He almost feels sorry.

Blair looks up at him from where he’s settled on his flimsy wooden chair.

“Better get those looked at,” Tony says, angling his palms towards the ground.

“Go fuck yourself,” Blair says with feeling.

Tony blasts through the roof, because he has what he needs. He knows where he’s going.

He has some business to settle in Latveria. 


	5. South of the Border

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Character death this chapter.

Tony does not call Maria.

He doesn’t head back to the Helicarrier as his job description and international law dictate he should, he doesn’t call Carol for backup.

This is personal, and he’s going to see it through. 

Sinthea Shmidt. Her name drums through his head and he charts a course over the Atlantic, through three storm systems that will probably disrupt his communications and a blizzard over Greenland. Tony knows her only by reputation, but he remembers the weariness in Steve’s voice as he’s talked about Red Skull, the way he never quite had a handle on this problem that wouldn’t go away. Steve’s Mandarin. If the clone thing was any indication, any plans he has for Steve’s body end in him wearing Steve’s face.

Tony doesn’t think he can handle that again.

His head aches, a dull pain coiled behind his eyes, but he sucks it down, mashes his eyes shut and presses on. He needs sleep, probably badly, but he’s not willing to put this off any longer. He injects himself with caffeine from one of the thigh compartments.

He skirts along the edge of the Baltic Sea for awhile, and then continental Europe rises up to meet him, dull and black in the early winter morning, and he scrambles his energy signatures and goes into stealth mode. By the time he’s crossing the Romanian border into Latveria, he’s just angry, and any doubts he might have had going into this are gone when he sees the sprawl of Doom’s little Capitol, sparkling silver laid out on the dark green/black.

He’s overcome by an overwhelming desire to blast Doomstadt right off the map, but that’s nothing new, really.

And then he gets hit with a surface-to-air missile. That’s new, he thinks as he falls, Doom must have found a way to get around his shielding since they last fought. He lands in a pond a few miles outside of Doomstadt proper.

Maria, of course, picks that moment to start caring about protocol.

“Make it quick,” he says, flicking mud off his sensors.

“We’re reading your energy signature and missile activity in Southern Latveria. S.H.I.E.L.D. is not authorized to enter Latverian airspace - “

“I’m a little busy right now.“ He doesn’t have time for this, there’s two more rocketing towards him from the North, and he shoots into the air again and heads for the mountains.

“It’s _actually_ you, isn’t it? Jesus Christ, Tony, you cannot be in Latveria -”

“None of your fucking business, Maria.“ He ducks into the gap as another one trails him over the ridgeline.  

“Stand down,” she says. “You have no authority –“

“Yeah, no. They shot first. I’m sorry, I thought I gave the orders – “

“I’ll remove you as Director if I have to."

“Maria, can you just _trust me_ for once!“ He swears loudly, then, into the filter, because he miscalculated as he banked, and the force of the explosion behind him sends him veering into a wall of rock. He’ll probably have a concussion on top of his headache now. At least the missiles are dealt with.

“This _ISN’T ABOUT TRUST,_ you are going to start an INTERNATIONAL INCIDENT –“

“You don’t like it, come pick me up. Good luck catching up,” he snaps, and cuts the transmission.

He perches on top of the highest peak he can find and starts scanning. 

It’s ridiculously easy to pinpoint his target. It doesn’t look like much from above ground, and if Tony didn’t know better he’d say it was a power station. But it’s the only one with its very own power grid and the two Hydra jets tied down on the landing pad are a dead giveaway.

Tony doesn’t dare hold his breath, because he knows better than that, but no more missiles chase after him. He targets the weapons systems not-so-cleverly nestled in concealed ports in the surrounding foothills anyway, and fires a volley of disruptor homing charges so he’s not actually causing property damage. Tony would very much like to torch the entire fucking facility, but he needs to search if he’s going to bring Steve’s body back, not to mention a jet to do it, so he settles for double-checking his stealth shielding and blasting the roof in.

He falls somewhat farther than he’d expected to, but he rolls into a ball as soon as he’s hit the ground and targets the automatic sentry-bots before they’ve even gotten a shot off.

The ceiling is vaulted, and backlit, though there’s a sizable hole where Tony launched himself through. It looks to be some kind of hub, a central room with corridors leading out in all directions. There’s an alarm going off, and the lights have gone red, though from the elevated alert level or Shmidt’s demented sense of industrial décor, Tony isn’t sure.

There isn’t a standing soul to be seen. There are bodies, strewn on the floor, limp against still-humming machinery, draped over railings, but no one is rushing at him with machine guns or lazers or idle threats.

Someone’s already been here to exterminate his filth.

Tony scans the room, but no one’s died from gunshots or weapons fire, it’s all broken necks and internal bleeding and fatal head injuries.

Tony stalks off down the corridor that Extremis says leads to research levels.

 

\- - -

 

The tunnels are sleek and narrow, and the red alarm lights gleam off the slick yellow walls as he moves on through. There are more Hydra guys down here, slumped in the middle of the hall, fallen aside in storage rooms along the way, and he’s starting to worry that he’s not actually the thing that tripped the alarm. The air is heavy with ozone from weapons fire but there’s an air of abandonment, of ruin, that unnerves him.

He’s starting to worry he’s not going to have the satisfaction of killing Shmidt himself.

And then he almost trips, because he finds Sharon Carter shackled to a support beam as he rounds a corner into the next sub-level, a bullet in her gut, her eyes open and dull with sweat and pain.

He thinks he should be surprised.

She’s wearing her uniform, but it’s torn and dirty and her hair is filthy, hanging in strands over her face. The last he heard, she was in deep cover, and he wonders how long she’s been rotting away as a prisoner here. She was a good agent, one of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s best, and Tony has no idea what the fuck she’s doing here.

He wonders if she let things slip, too, after Steve – if she drifted, a little too far gone, a little too complacent, to be captured like this. Did she stop caring, when he died in her arms?

Did she know that she wasn’t the only one who had eyes for Steve?

“Oh my god, Sharon,” he says, raising the faceplate, because he would want a face instead of a mask.  

She splutters and sucks in a weak breath. “Tony,” she says, her eyes flickering up to meet his. “You shouldn’t be here.”

He lets his gauntlets fall away so he can put pressure on her stomach, but it’s no good. She’s lost too much blood already, she’s getting paler and she’s far too still, and what is she fucking _doing here?_

“You’re gonna be fine,” he lies, “just –“

“Tony,” she says again, her eyes unfocused.

“Ok, no, stay awake, hey,” he says, looking around wildly, her blood bubbling up between his fingers. He has no idea what her part in this is, but it can’t be a coincidence, can it. “Just, talk to me, tell me what they’re doing, why are you here?”

“Steve,” she says, “they couldn’t, they were trying to, Red Skull, he was, trying to bring himself back in Steve’s body, but it went wrong, something went wrong – it wasn’t him.”

She looks down at her stomach and back up at Tony’s face.

“I think someone shot me,” she says, genuinely confused.

“Yeah, I got that – Sharon, how are they - Steve’s dead, his body is – how could they?”

Her eyes are sliding out of focus, but she blinks, determined, and steals a shallow breath. Tony gives her a minute, tops. He doesn’t have the tools to fix her, they aren’t the same blood type, he can’t do anything.

“No, you don’t – it doesn’t matter – he – got loose, he, Shmidt failed, it can’t have been ready yet, you have to, go, you need to kill him before,” she pants.

Sharon tries to breathe, but it sounds like her lung is collapsing, and she shudders in his arms.

“Got loose - before what, Sharon? I’m gonna kill Shmidt, why do you think I’m here? Sharon?”

Her eyes are dull and blue and dead.

“Fuck!” he shouts at the ceiling.

Tony kneels for a moment in shock, because Hydra’s gotten their claws in everywhere, and this is way past simple negligence on his part. Sharon was _there,_ she was on the steps, with Steve – Red Skull’s been planning this, and he never even suspected. To lose one of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s best agents with no heads-up at all, to lose Steve’s body, these are basic things, he should have done better, he needs to _focus_ –

(Stop. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Stop.)

Tony closes her eyes and moves on.

 

\- - -

 

The machine has its own room.

It’s Doom’s handiwork, Tony can see that much – but it’s very much Zola’s code. The lab is a mess - there are doombots disabled and blinking on the floor, their casings and housings twisted and smashed on the concrete floor. If Tony didn’t know better, he’d say Bruce was behind this. Something was fighting - the lab techs are all unconscious or dead on the floor, bloodied and thrown aside like they weighed nothing at all.

The machine itself is still humming and cycling in its housing, and it takes up the better part of the room. There’s a stasis chamber hooked into the main coupling, and Tony runs up to it, clanking.

The glass casing has been broken, and there are _restraints –_ empty, blood-stained – one of them ripped right out of the metal interior.

Fuck. That containment cell is a model intended to suspend cellular decomposition immediately after death, and if it’s broken –

_No, Tony, He got loose, Shmidt failed, you have to go -_

There’s a trail of blood leading from the stasis chamber, and Tony follows it.  

 

\- - -

 

Zola’s body (hardware, whatever) is propped against one of the corridor walls, the viewscreen smashed and the rectangular head severed from its base. Tony blasts the door to the control room out of the way, and he’s just stepped inside when when Sinthea Shmidt flies through the wall of glass not 3 meters in front of him. She hits the wall behind him and falls, limp, to the floor, blood trickling from her forehead, her eyes open and unmoving.

Shit.

The control room isn’t big, just monitors lining the walls and two rows of control interfaces, their swivel chairs empty and their panels untended. It’s overlooking a massive room that houses what looks like an enormous reactor, humming orange beyond the glass window that’s just been broken.

He hears the scuffle before he sees it, far down in the reactor chamber.  Tony dives in through the hole she’s just come from, and he’s just getting to his feet when he stumbles again, because his body forgets how to breathe for a second.

It's Steve. 

It’s Steve Rogers, naked, grappling like Spartacus with what looks like a Doombot with its face half-shredded off.

“You have no _business_ interfering here,” the Doombot says in a German accent, and it’s a voice Tony knows too well. Red Skull apparently hasn’t recovered from losing his last ill-gotten body.

Red Skull punches Steve hard in the jaw with a mechanical fist, and he reels from the force of the blow.

“You had no business trying to steal my fucking _body_ ,” Steve’s body – Steve – snarls, as he staggers back up.

“You cannot hope to win,” Red Skull says, “You cannot – NO! I will not be thwarted, not by -”

Steve plants two broad hands on the sides of his mechanical head, and snaps his electronic neck with a quick jerk of his shoulders. He falls to his knees, panting, wincing from the broken glass he seems to have settled on.

Tony realizes he isn’t breathing, and gasps in a breath through the filter.  

Steve looks up from where he’s kneeling, and recognition and _disgust_ run themselves over his face.

“Come to see the show, Director?” he asks, throwing out a hand to steady himself as he lurches back on his heels.

“ _Jesus_ , Steve?” he gets out.

It’s surreal, standing there, talking to a dead man who very clearly isn’t dead – his body looks just as alive as it ever has, and he’s bleeding – a lot, a jagged gash running over his forearm and what look to be gunshot wounds healing in his shoulder.

There are scars, three – on his chest, his abdomen. Round. Bullets. Freshly pink, almost white.

All the things he’s been pushing away, all the things he hasn’t allowed himself to feel come flooding back when he sees his face, and grief and unabated shame wrap themselves around Tony’s heart and burrow in.

Tony wants to believe, but he doesn’t know how to reconcile this. He raises his right arm in warning.

“How the everloving  _–_ _how_ are you alive?” he says.

“I missed you too, Tony,” Steve says darkly, and there’s no humor in his voice.

“I – you were dead,” Tony says.

Steve closes his eyes.

“I thought so too,” he says.

“Fuck,” Tony says. “Jesus Christ. That – this was you. The body count – that was – that was you. Escaping. You – that was – you threw Sinthea Shmidt through a _window_. _Christ,_ Steve, the whole facility –”

“It was self-defense,” Steve says.

“You really think I care?” Tony says quietly.

“Well, you’re all about law and order now, aren’t you,” Steve says, pulling his knees up to his chest. “And thank god for that - I thought I was on my own, but here you are, Iron Man come to save the day. My savior.” The words echo off the metal walls, and Tony’s stomach churns, because he really didn’t think Steve had this kind of bitterness in him.

“I came here because I thought I was recovering your body, Steve.”

“Sorry to disappoint,” Steve says.

Tony opens his mouth but no words come out.

Steve is pulling himself up and leaning on one of the control panels, now, and he looks around and starts stripping one of the Hydra guys for his jumpsuit.

And Tony watches, and doesn't speak, struck dumb by this man in front of him, silenced by how colossally wrong this entire thing is. He’s never allowed himself to imagine this reunion, because that would be self-indulgent and childish and until today it never could have happened, but now that it’s happening, now that he’s here, he can’t fucking handle how unfair this is.

Steve is alive, and still hates him.                                                       

“Still hiding behind your armor, I see,” Steve says, pulling on pants, because Tony hasn’t raised the faceplate yet. “Did you build yourself a brave new world while I was gone?”

Tony calls Maria, because he doesn’t want to deal with this anymore. 


	6. FUBAR

“Nice of you to call,” Maria says, “You’re under arrest. Don’t even think about running, the Helicarrier is already en route -”

“Yeah, whatever,” Tony says, “look,” broadcasting the live feed as he pans over Steve.

The line goes quiet for a few seconds.

“What,” she breathes. “Is that - really him?”

“Far as I can tell,” Tony says, determined to demonstrate he couldn’t care less. “Red Skull stole his body for another resurrection gambit. He just took out this entire facility singlehandedly. Now do you get why I came here?”

“That was Doom’s facility,” she says, “You’re still the aggressor, it’s foreign soil–“

“I didn’t attack anyone,” Tony says. “I meant the  _whole_  facility, there was no one left by the time I got here.”

“Well, you’re just lucky you found stolen government property. Maybe you won’t go to prison.”

“He’s not government property. And I’m not going to prison, Doom was involved in stealing Steve’s body, there are witnesses -”

“His body was in federal custody,” Maria starts, “so that makes him government property for now until he’s not officially dead anymore. He’s still a criminal, coming back from the dead doesn’t excuse -“

“No,” Tony says. “I’ll bring him in for stitches and a debrief, but we’re not locking him up again.”

“It’s not up to you,” she says. “It’s not up to me. International law says you’re in deep shit for waltzing into Latveria without an invitation.”

“I’ll talk to the president myself,” he says. “He was dead. That should be a slate-wiper.”

“Well, it’s not,” she snaps. “You’re assuming you’ll still be Director after this. The Helicarrier is on the way, we’ll send a Quinjet. Don’t let him out of your sight, and don’t fucking blow anything else up. You’re both functionally under arrest.”

“I didn’t blow anything up, all I did was disrupt their guidance systems -“

“It doesn’t matter what you did or didn’t blow up, you still launched an assault on a sovereign nation -”

“Oh, that’s bullshit, there was no assaulting -” he snaps.

“Acting Director Hill out,” she says, raising her voice above his.  

He pulls his helmet off and chucks it across the room.

Steve looks too exhausted to care.

“How much do you remember,” Tony says impassively, fiddling with his gauntlet instead of looking at Steve. “There are going to be questions. Are there gaps, are you missing things?”

“You don’t get a pass,” Steve says, “if that’s what you’re thinking. I remember everything. The  _last_ thing I remember is being shot, actually.” He presses a hand to his bleeding nose. “Fix those security holes yet, Director?”

There’s something in his voice Tony doesn’t recognize, something mean and foreign and cold, something he used to think was completely beyond Steve before they were enemies ripping at each other in the streets.

“Don’t call me that,” Tony says.

“What should I call you?”

“How can you be so cavalier about this?” Tony says, angry enough to steal a glance at Steve’s face.

Steve just stares at him. 

“It’s nothing new. I’ve been dead before,” he finally says. He presses a hand to his still-bleeding shoulder.

Tony doesn’t even know what to do with that.

“I have to take you in,” he says.

“I gathered,” Steve says.

“The Helicarrier is coming, but they won’t be here for at least another hour. Are you – do you need–”

“No,” Steve says, “I’ve had worse.”

“That’s not what I asked,” Tony says, standing up. “I’ll – I can go get a first aid kit. You probably need stitches on that.” Tony’s sure he could handle this if he had alcohol. As it is, he’s still got a blinding headache, and he’s willing to bet he can find great painkillers in their medical bay.  

“Probably,” Steve says.

“Are we going to talk about this,” Tony says, because this isn’t progressing as he’d envisioned it. “I’m sorry. I can’t imagine how you’re feeling. I didn’t think I’d–“

“No,” Steve says sharply, “we’re not.

“Steve,” Tony makes himself say, “Please, I’m –“

“How do you  _think_  I’m feeling?” Steve says.

“I don’t –“

“For all I know a few hours ago I was dying. I wake up strapped inside a stasis tube with Red Skull’s voice in my head, no idea how I got here – and right now  _you_  –

“– what –“

“– are the last person on  _earth_  I want to see.”

Tony looks very pointedly at the interface panels on the opposite wall.

“Well, it won’t be long,” he says coldly, looking down at his hands, “and you’ll probably be back in a cell again so you won’t have to see me. Get up, we’re going to medical, come on.” He bends to pick up his helmet and jams it back on his head.

He keeps the faceplate up, even though he really doesn’t want to. 

“I’m fine,” Steve says for the thousandth fucking time.  

“Fucking –  _fine_ ,” Tony says, and throws a ziptie at him. “Do your hands,” he says, “if this is how you’re gonna be.”

Steve loops it around his wrists and yanks it shut with his teeth, and then sits resolutely on his heels and closes his eyes.

They pass the rest of the hour in silence.

 

\- - -

 

Tony has never been more relieved to see Maria stalk down the ramp of the Quinjet.  

“Captain Rogers,” she nods. Tony, she ignores.

“Maria,” Steve says. There’s a grudging respect in his voice Tony suspects he’ll never be privy to.

“Get rid of your armor,” she says to Tony, all business. Come to clean up his mess.

“It’s not like I’m running,” he says, but he drops the plating and sends it into a containment unit she’s got set up in the Quinjet. He rubs at his temples, trying to chase away the dull pressure building behind his eyes.

“Look,” Tony says as her guards move to corral him. “I know you’re eager to throw me in the brig and claim your rightful place on the throne, but you need to do some cleanup first – there’s a machine needs packing up, what they were using to bring him back – and Sinthea Shmidt is a level up, as is Zola. Ah, and – Sharon’s body,” he says, remembering.

“Sharon Carter?” Maria asks, just as Steve says “Sharon’s body?” shaking off the agents that are attempting to shackle him.

“Yes,” Tony says to both of them. “She’s dead. Didn’t you notice her while you were roaring and rampaging?”

“No,” Steve says. “No, I didn’t.”

“I’m sorry,” Tony says, and he can’t decide if he means it or not.  

Maria is mumbling orders to someone, but Tony has enhanced hearing now, and he rounds on her as two agents try to grab his arms.

“How the hell did she just fall off the radar and  _happen_  to be here? Did you know about this?”

“She was in deep cover,” Maria says, “She went dark about two weeks ago.”

“And you didn’t think to look for her?”

“You know that’s not procedure,” Maria says, waving groups of agents into the facility.

“Fuck, Maria,” Tony says, looking at Steve, willing him to understand, this wasn’t his fault, this wasn’t his screw-up, for once, but Steve doesn’t say anything. He just looks at Tony with unspeakable anger and hurt in his eyes, and Tony has to look away, because everything is wrong.

He’s led up the steps, into the narrow interior of the jet, and he thinks the world seems a little blurry, but he can’t be sure. He stumbles, a little, and that can’t be right, he’s not drunk, he’s not drugged - Maria is saying something to him, something about Doom, and Steve is glaring at him from where he’s sitting, and the roaring is back, thrumming through his head, because he never did get anything for his headache –“

“I think I fucked up,” he says, and then the world comes crashing down around him.

 

\- - -

 

He wakes up in medical, wearing nothing but his briefs. There’s a monitor beeping insistently somewhere to the right of his head, so he turns it off with his brain.

Bad idea, he thinks, and almost rolls off the bed as pain fires through his head. There’s an IV tugging on his wrist, so he fumbles with the tape and slides it out. He cracks an eye open with great effort, and after the god-awful light resolves into something manageable, he sees he’s in one of the smaller observation rooms. No restraints, that’s nice of them, and there’s not even a guard, so he sends the gold creeping over his skin and half rolls, half falls off the bed.

He half-thinks it stutters as it covers him, but maybe it’s whatever sedative they’ve pumped into him.

He doesn’t have time for this. He needs to do damage control, badly, because he has a sneaking suspicion he’s about to be fired if he hasn’t been permanently removed already. Oh, and Steve is alive, and Maria is angry, and Sharon is dead.

He needs a fucking drink.

The door mechanism hisses open and a younger guy in a labcoat walks in.

“How long was I out?” Tony says, annoyed, because this kid isn’t Maya.

“8 hours,” Labcoat says. “Nice to see you up, Director. You collapsed in Latveria, you’re suffering from a migraine as well as-“

“I don’t get migraines,” Tony cuts in, doing his best to stand up, “you might not have heard, I grew a new brain when I took Extremis –“

“Apparently you do,” Labcoat says, apparently unimpressed by his bullshit. “You’re also ridiculously dehydrated, and will continue to be so for the moment, as I see you’ve taken it upon yourself to remove your IV line –“

“Where’s Maya,” Tony says, running a hand over his face, “If I’m getting migraines she should look at my scans or something.”

“Uh, I don’t know where Dr. Hansen is - you need to rest, Director. Your body may be…enhanced…but you still need sleep like the rest of us. How many hours had you gone without?”

Tony tries to remember and honestly can’t.

“Uh,” he says, “probably too many. I’ll take a nap,” he says, moving to go.

“You’re not free to go,” Labcoat says indignantly.

“Uh huh,” Tony says, and walks out the door.

He passes the observation room where they’re drawing Steve’s blood on his way to the turbolift. A medical team swarms around him where he sits on an exam table with his shirt off, nodes stuck all over his chest.

Tony storms past and pretends not to see.

 

\- - -

 

No one tries to stop him as he makes his way to his quarters, and there’s not even an armed guard waiting for him. He must not be Maria’s biggest problem in light of recent events.

It doesn’t take him long, and he vaguely thinks maybe he should have kept the IV, because if he was dehydrated before, he’s going to feel like dying once he really gets going. He slumps in his chair all the same and throws back two glasses of whiskey in quick succession.

He brings up the feed from the medbay and watches them run tests on Steve.

He’s moderately drunk when Maria uses her override codes. Her mouth falls open a little when she sees him lounging on the sofa in sweats.

“Are you – are you  _drinking_?”

Tony looks at the bottle he’s gripping with clumsy fingers, then back at her.

“What gave me away?”

“Since  _when_?”

“Since I’m an adult, and I can have a fucking drink if I feel like it.”

She stares. “You’ve been clean for  _years –_ “

“I fell off the wagon  _weeks ago_ _,_  where have you been?”

She opens her mouth to say something.

“Don’t even start,” he says, “You don’t get to lecture me about this. There is no way you can realistically argue that it’s been a problem if this is the first you’ve even noticed.” He's suspended. What does it matter. What does anything matter. 

“You’re supposed to still be in Medical,” Maria says.

“I don’t need a doctor,” he says, taking another swig. “Maya is the only -“

But he closes his mouth, because Maria looks uncomfortable, and almost apologetic, and _oh._

“Well, thank you for letting me know,” Tony says, setting his glass down with a clatter, “She actually did it. And you let her go.” He didn’t think she’d actually go through with her threats, but Maya’s never fucked around, has she.

“Yes,” Maria says. “I did. She’s a liability.”

Tony buries his head in his hands and wonders if the universe is paying him back for everything he’s ever screwed up. It takes everything he’s got, but he represses the urge to down the rest of his glass and slink into his bedroom and open the hatch and  _jump._   

“Good job. You know, she wants to weaponize Extremis,” he says, feeling vindictive and utterly miserable. “I guess she was always gonna go. Steve hated her. Hates. Steve hates me,” he says.

“Steve–”

“Steve Rogers," he clarifies, "Captain America hates me.”

“I can’t say I blame him,” she says, eyeing him and his bottle warily, “but he does appear to be the genuine article. We, uh." She eyes the empty glass he’s set down and hesitates.

“What,” Tony snaps, “spit it out.”

She looks pissed. “We haven’t decided what to do with him yet. He’s being cooperative, although we’re still not sure why Doom consented to have Red Skull do his resurrection in Latveria. That’s harboring terrorists, and we’d bring him in if we knew where he was–”

“We?”  

“Well, for reasons that are beyond me, someone on Capitol Hill is still hell-bent on keeping you here, so you’re reinstated. We finished our diagnostics while you were out beating up witnesses, there’s nothing wrong with the Helicarrier. Isolated incident. We still need you to go over the repairs, and you need to go over Steve’s stuff, but I suppose that can wait until tomorrow.” she says.  

“I can’t, m’not on duty,” he says, standing up. He lurches.  

“You know what?" she snaps. "We’ll do this later. Sober up before you set foot on the bridge."

“I’m not going to the bridge, I don’t, just leave,” he murmurs.

“Pull yourself together, Stark,” she says with disgust, her boots clunking on the grating as she leaves.  

Tony sits on the edge of the couch and pours another glass.

Pull yourself together, Tony, stop feeling sorry for yourself, Tony, fix yourself, Tony.

 _Stop caring, Tony_ _._ He smiles a mirthless smile to no one and takes another mouthful.

\- - -

 

Midnight officially finds Tony on a bender.

He pads down to detention, trailing a hand along the wall, and he trips down the last flight of stairs.

Steve is in proper detention quarters this time, lying on his back on the little cot in the corner. He’s got no privacy, though, there’s a window that discloses his goings-on to the guards in the hallway.

“I missed you,” Tony says pathetically, pressing an open palm to the plexiglass. He’s leaning and lurching and he’s entirely too drunk to be having this conversation.  

“I see you’re drinking again,” Steve says.

He doesn’t even _move_.

Tony reels and presses himself against the coolness of the window. Steve doesn’t care that he’s drinking. Steve doesn’t care.

“Lecture me,” Tony prods. “What you do best.”

“It’s not like you’d listen,” Steve says acidly, and something twists in Tony’s gut.

It’s a far cry from the Steve that carried him out of a burning building once.

“Ok, ok, I want to talk to you,” Tony says.

“I don’t want to talk to you,” Steve says.

There’s a guard watching them from his post at the end of the hall, and it’s making Tony irrationally angry, so he rounds on the poor kid.

“Hey,” Tony says, entirely too belligerent for the hour, “Fuck off.”

The kid scampers, because you don’t fuck with Iron Man, especially when he’s drunk.

“So, I was fucking Maya,” he blurts out, and he doesn’t even care that he’s being obnoxious, he just wants a reaction, something other than silence, wants Steve to yell at him so he can stumble back up to his quarters and drink himself into a blackout.

Steve stands up in a huff. “Congratulations, why are you here,” he says. “I’m trying to sleep. We’ve done this already. I’ve said all I have to say to you, Director,” he spits.

“Steve, no,” says Tony, “There’s more, you don’t – there’s – you don’t even know, you don’t know what it’s been like, here.” He’s drunk, he knows he’s a mess, he feels sloppy and out of control but he doesn’t even care, because this has been welling inside him for weeks now, and there’s only so long he can push these things away.

“Yes,” Steve says, “It must have been terrible for you, all that power to wield. That crown looks heavy _Director_ ,” he snarls. 

“Fucking – you  _said_ you wanted to talk, once,” Tony says, hitting the plexiglass with his fisted hand. “But we fucking – punched each other out, Steve.”

“You’re drunk,” Steve says, turning away.

“That doesn’t _matter_ ,” Tony says, and he’s legitimately angry now.

Steve rounds on the window. “It does, Tony –“

“It doesn’t, I still want us – “

“There is no  _us_ ,” Steve roars.

Oh.                                                          

Tony maybe should have waited to do this, he shouldn’t have come down here with whiskey buzzing in his brain, he shouldn’t have thought he could make something of this nothing. Shouldn’t have presumed. Should have known there’s no room in his life for faith anymore.

“I wanted there to be,” he says, swaying on his feet.

“You should have thought of that before you tried to have me sentenced to death, Tony,” Steve snarls.

“I  _didn’t,_ ” Tony says miserably, “I didn’t, Steve, it’s – it was all I could think of, it was  _all_ I fucking thought of, I asked them–”

“Save it,” Steve snaps, “Go sleep it off, you’re embarrassing yourself –“

“ _You’re not fucking listening_ ,” Tony shouts, “It was only  _ever_  about you. It -  _there was only ever you_ , Steve, I ruined everything, I didn't want to, I didn't want this, I wanted you whole, I wanted you to stay  _good_ , because I don’t think I could have fucking -  _lived_ with myself if you hadn’t. I was willing,” he says, his voice breaking, “I was fucking willing to do it, and then you  _died_ , Steve, and nothing fucking mattered, because it was all a  _giant fucking waste._ ”

Steve stares at the ceiling, and somehow that hurts most, because he doesn’t even care enough to listen anymore.   

“I should have told you,” Tony says, “I should have just fucking  _told you.”_

“Told me  _what,_ ” Steve says.

“I  _told_ you,” Tony says, “but you were already – I was ready, when you went, seeing you like that – I told you, and it didn’t mean anything. It wasn’t even you.”

Tony flees, because he’s losing his nerve, he’s sobbing and he doesn’t even know when that happened, and he whirls around gracelessly and runs up the stairs past the baffled guards who probably heard the whole fucking thing, past engineering and the med bay and the lab where Maya worked, past the morgue where Sharon’s body is lying, through the corridors and up the lift and back to his quarters to weep.

He fumbles with the keypad because he can’t fucking see through his tears and he’s rapidly losing his fine motor control, but he stumbles in and faceplants on the couch. He’s spinning, he feels the world moving on without him, and he sinks and sinks and sinks, and Steve’s face, Steve’s dead fucking face, lying on that table with his eyes closed, is all he can see.

Tony makes himself sit up and gets into the security recordings, goes back those long, awful months, and erases. Tony making a fool of himself during the eulogy. Tony sobbing over a corpse. He deletes the pictures of them in costume, deletes the news articles praising their cooperation, deletes the shots of all the post-it-notes Steve used to leave him, deletes his emails, deletes the evidence, deletes.


	7. Damned if You Do

Tony wakes early with his face plastered to the coffee table, a bottle between his thighs, orange sunlight creeping over his face and a hollow ache he knows won’t go away with his hangover.

He brings his brain online and really, just the effort is enough to make him dry-heave, but there’s no one left to give him disapproving looks or take away his liquor, so he drags himself over to the coffee maker and swallows what’s almost certainly a dangerous dose of aspirin and absolutely does not think about what he thinks he said last night. It settles, heavy in his stomach, the awful stab of regret indistinguishable from the nausea.

He had an impossible chance, and he squandered it away for a pittance. A few hours’ numbness. A few hours of empty relief.

Tony vomits, just once, and pours the rest of the bottle down the drain in the kitchenette.

He doesn’t want to do this anymore.  

\- - -

Maria almost drops her coffee in shock when he walks onto the bridge in his uniform. Tony can’t say he blames her, quite frankly, he’s shocked he doesn’t have alcohol poisoning.

Not that he wasn’t trying. Extremis, he decides, is a curse.

They spend the morning going over the manifest detailing all the tech they confiscated from Latveria – generator units, the apparatus Tony saw, various pieces that look reverse-engineered from the time machine that once sent him to medieval Wales. He tells Maria so, and she chokes on her coffee.  She seems to be having trouble appreciating humor right now.

He has it all packed and stored – he’s sure the science types will want to go over it all, but there’s no way of telling if it’s still tagged with Steve’s biotelemetry – or Red Skull’s, for that matter, and the last thing he needs is some overeager probie fucking up the space-time continuum.

There are meetings, and there are inspections, but his mind is down in detention.

He hates this part, the comedown, the inescapable melancholy that mires him in despair the next day. He doesn’t absorb the majority of what Dugan tries to tell him about the search for Fury, or the details of Sharon’s undercover assignment, or how how the autopsy indicated she had chronal markers in her blood.

Steve’s voice, though, that, he can’t seem to get rid of.  

Tony isn’t sure what he expected, but his fucking face, his voice, his everything that Tony ever wanted, warped with rage and hurt that Tony put there.  

He’s a fucking idiot for thinking he was ever going to get a second chance.

He wants to blame it on the bottle, wants to think that it would have happened differently in daylight, but really, he knew as soon as it left his lips. Steve would have reacted the same way even if he’d been sober. All those years, Tony thinks. Sparring, fighting, arguing. So much time spent in close quarters. Saving each other. Tony could never quite tamp down on the wanting.

Steve doesn’t want him. Steve never wanted him, probably.

That’s – fine, Tony can do it alone. He’ll do it alone and then he’ll slip out of the public eye, maybe move back to Seattle for a while. He could head the Washington team, they don’t have one yet, coordinate with the West Coast Avengers.

It doesn’t matter where he goes, really, he just needs to be away. He can’t live in the ruins of this house he’s built and razed.

\- - -

It turns out there’s still no legal precedent for someone who’s come back from the dead, much less a super-powered someone who happened to be in federal custody for treason. He could get S.H.I.E.L.D. lawyers, but it feels like a betrayal, an outsourcing of what should be a family matter. His finger hovers over Jen’s number before he throws it aside. He knows she didn’t feel good about signing. She’s not gonna talk to him. 

He wants to handle this on his own, but there are protocols, he has to adhere to policies and due process and it feels petty, he knows he wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t resting on his uniformed shoulders. He has to hold himself up with the fabric of the law, but the law isn’t equipped to deal with these eventualities.

Things like this only happen in Tony’s world.

And isn’t that just what Steve was trying to tell him.

He calls Carol. Carol always talks to him. 

\- - -

She shows up a few hours after he sends the message, still in costume, smelling faintly of crumbling cement and sweat. Tony wonders who she’s been fighting and the nostalgia is physically painful.

“Hi, Carol,” he says with a grin he doesn’t feel.

“Why didn’t you call me earlier?” she says with a sigh, falling into the chair opposite his desk.

“What?” he says, “We just found him yesterday –“

“No,” she says, “Well, yes, but that’s not what I mean, Tony, you’re relapsing –“

“Wow,” he says, “does Maria just make a point of letting everyone know what I do in my spare time? I have one fucking bad night -”

“No, she told me because she’s worried about you,” Carol says evenly. She’s not going to stoop to bickering over this. She’s better than he ever was.

Tony runs a hand over his face, because this is not the time for this conversation.

“I am not relapsing, ok, I’m – better, even, I’m to the point where it’s ok to have a drink now and then, it’s a non-issue –“

She actually laughs at him. 

“Oh, you’re better, you’re a _moderate user,_ ” she says, rolling her eyes, “and this has nothing at all to do with Steve dying –“

“Everything in my life does not revolve around Steve Rogers,” he snaps.

She looks like she wants to snap back, but she relaxes her face instead and Tony knows she’s being more polite than he really deserves.

“Ok,” she says carefully. It’s a concession and they both know it, but that’s why he’s talking to her about this and not Maria. “What do you need?”

“Did you see him?” Tony says.

“Yes,” she says, “I did. We talked. It was hard.”

Tony stares for a minute at his hands.  

“I don’t know what to do about him,” Tony admits. “I’m worried they’re going to have him sent before a military tribunal once this gets out, I’m worried they’re going to want the death penalty. That’s – not many people knew that, but there was talk of it, before.”

Carol doesn’t say anything.

“Oh,” she says finally. “But – I mean, a lot has changed since he died. The media ate it up – you saw it, you built a statue.”

“He deserved a statue.”

“He’s going to hate the statue.”

He smiles weakly. “I can’t let him go through that again,” he says quietly.

“I know,” she says, “He’s a hero.”

There’s that word again. Somehow it always ends up tacked to Steve’s name.

Tony sighs. “He’d hate the statue. He’ll hate everything I’ve done.”

“It’s not just you, Tony. “You weren’t acting in a vacuum, none of us were – you can’t blame yourself for everything. We  _are_ doing a lot,” she says, “it’s not perfect, but it’s working. It’s – different, I know, I – it’s not what we had, but we’re making a difference. Just – keep that in mind, from someone who’s out in the field all the time. Steve – he hasn’t seen the progress we’ve made.”

“I’m not sure he’s going to care,” Tony says.

“Do you?” she says, her voice a little too sad.

“We’re not talking about me,” he says, and it comes out harsher than he’d intended.

He sighs, and tries again. “I’m sorry I bothered you,” he says, “I want this to be OK. I – this is my fault, I just want to fix it, I want everything to go back to the way it was, and it’s – it’s not going to. He can’t go back to prison, he should be - ” Tony trails off, because he’s doesn’t know what Steve should be.

Free, probably.

She sits there for a moment, considering. Scrutinizing. She knows him too well.

“I think you need to do what you always intended to,” she says, and for a moment he freezes because he’s not entirely sure she hasn’t added mindreading to her skillset.

“What?” he says.

“You were always counting on the SHRA passing, I know that – but you weren’t counting on having to deal with the aftermath alone, were you,” she says quietly. “You always wanted Steve in charge–“

“Yeah,” Tony says, “that went well.”

“It could be different now,” she says. “Maybe he’s changed his mind.”

Tony snorts. “Don’t be coy,” he says, “has he or hasn’t he?”

“I think you need to talk to him,” she says, standing.

“I did,” he says ruefully. “I tried. He doesn’t want to hear anything I have to say.”

Carol’s eyes flash. “Well, then try again. Sober,” she says vehemently. “Non-issue, my ass.”

Tony closes his eyes momentarily.

“I would have called you if I thought I needed to,” he says.

“No you wouldn’t,” she says, “you like your lone wolf thing too much.” She pauses, running a finger over the edge of her mask. “I worry about you,” she says.

“Don’t,” Tony says.  

She looks like she wants to say something else, but Tony doesn’t want to hear it, it’s too hard, it’s too soon. He misses being on a team with people who trust him. He used to have the certainty of knowing what he was doing was right. For the greater good. Carol is – salt in a wound that’s never going to heal.  

She stands. "Take care of yourself, Tony," she says. She throws a last wan little smile his way and strides out, her feet dragging on the floor, the slump barely visible in her shoulders.

\- - -

The White House is still decorated for Christmas, and Tony shows up in a suit out of courtesy, although he’d dearly love to be wearing his armor.

They have dinner, and it feels like another lifetime to Tony. Once, he could grease anyone he needed to, spin anything just the right way so he could get what he wanted. Wheedle. Lie.

It never worked on Steve.  

“Aren’t I spoiled,” The President says, prodding at his halibut with his fork, “Kitchen gets it shipped right from the dock. I’d move to Alaska if I didn’t have a day job.”

Tony smiles and does his best to look like a man who wants to be where he is.

“Mr. President,” he says with a sigh, “We need to discuss the matter of Steve Rogers. I’m sure you’ve heard about his recovery.”

“I have,” he says. He seems wholly unconcerned, and Tony decides if necromancy isn’t giving him pause, he’ll do well in the next four years. “I was assured it was being handled internally.”

“It is,” Tony says, “I have some concerns about what’s going to happen next.”

“I’m listening,” he says, taking another bite of halibut.

“It’s - since the SHRA’s inception, we’ve seen a massive reduction in terrorist activities. The loss of a major portion of our superhero population notwithstanding, those who’ve registered are making leaps and bounds in national security. That said, there are problems – there’s obviously still a great deal to be done with efficiency, implementation, security. Public reception,” he stresses, pressing his mouth into a thin line.

“And you have a solution,” The President says, his mouth quirking up in a smile.

“I’d like to ask you to consider granting Steve Rogers a full pardon.”

The dining room is painfully silent for a moment.

“That’s a tall order. Steve Rogers is about to be tried for treason,” the President says seriously.

“I know that,” Tony says, “he’s also the single most powerful symbol we have at our disposal. We need public approval if we want this to survive. We’re doing all right, but it’s still early – if we have him working for us, this thing will be ironclad for years to come.” He sighs. “Much as it pains me to say it, we need this bill not to be overturned.”

“My predecessor agreed to give you 12 pardons, Tony. You’ve used them all, if I’m not mistaken.”

“That was before Steve came back from the dead,” Tony says. “Give me a 13th.” Please.

The President’s face is solemn. “They’re not Halloween candy, Director Stark. He’s a high-profile criminal, I’m not just going to agree to absolve him.”

“He’s no more guilty than I am,” Tony says.

“The law begs to differ.”

“He’s willing to cooperate now,” Tony lies. It’s true, if he’s exceedingly lucky. “He’s seen what we’ve done with the Initiative. We’ve swayed him. Putting him in prison, or on death row, would be a colossal waste. The public loves rehabilitation.”

“Is that what we're calling this?” the president says with a pointed look.

“Yes,” Tony says evenly, staring back.

They stay like that for a moment, because the President is not a stupid man, and Tony doesn’t like baring his soul to anyone. It’s a role he’s never quite mastered, asking for what he needs. For help.

He’ll beg if he has to.

The president breaks their gaze first, and Tony sighs. “He doesn’t deserve what’s coming to him,” he says quietly. “He’s a hero.”

“That may well be,” the President says, “but I need to know this isn’t going to come back and bite us in the ass.”

Tony puts his fork down. 

“I don’t ask for this lightly,” he says. “You’re the only one with the authority to do this, so I’m coming to you.”

Maybe it’s the honest melancholy Tony can’t seem to wipe from his face, maybe the President just doesn’t have all the information, but he shakes Tony’s hand and promises to have it on his desk by tomorrow.

“Don’t mess it up,” he says, with entirely more faith than Tony’s ever deserved.  

\- - -

Tony hears the door, hears them tromp in, the slightest jangle of chains even before he turns around. He’s standing in front of the panel windows, his breath fogging on the glass.

“Dismissed,” he says, without turning around. “We’ll be fine.”

He wishes he could just stay frozen like this. He looks at the glass in his hand. It’s very Marlon Brando, he knows, but it gives him something to examine, something he can press his fingers around when it gets to be too much.

And it will, he’s sure.

Steve is waiting, so he turns around.

“Hello, Steve,” he says quietly.

“Why am I here?” Steve says, his legs planted apart, his chin tilted up in challenge. Restrained, still. Wearing one of the awful S.H.I.E.L.D.-issue jumpsuits.

Eager to leave.

“I’m sorry you’re still in the brig,” he says, “I can get you real clothes. Here,” he says, and unlocks his cuffs with Extremis. They fall away onto the floor.

“Don’t bother,” Steve says, “I’m sure I’ll be someone else’s problem soon.”

Tony winces.

“I don’t want to fight with you,” Tony says. “I – sit.”

Steve works his jaw, but he sits. He looks healthy enough, and it’s startling, really. There are no bags under his eyes, there’s none of the haunted look that Tony remembers from their final interactions. He looks whole. 

Tony sips. He’s certainly not.   

“I know you probably don’t want to talk to me, but I have a proposition for you.” 

“Not interested,” Steve says.

“You haven’t even heard what it is yet,” Tony protests.

“I don't need to,” Steve says. “I know how you work. You’re going to offer me a deal.”

Tony bites the inside of his mouth. “Do you want a drink?” he asks, even though he knows the answer will be no.

“No,” Steve says, “but I’m sure you’ll have one.”

Tony perches on the edge of his desk and sets his glass down. 

“Ok, fine. You’re right, Obama’s agreed to pardon you.”

“Obama won,” Steve says to himself, and Tony thinks he sees the faintest hint of a smile before it’s gone. 

Tony tries out a smile for himself. “Obama won,” he says. 

“And what’s the catch?” Steve says, folding his hands together. He looks so comfortable on the couch, so fucking assured that he’s always been in the right, so unconcerned with what could happen to him.

“There isn’t one,” Tony says flatly.

“Then why am I here?” Steve says. “You could have just sent it down.”

“I wanted to ask you for a favor,” he says, wilting in the face of Steve’s hostility.

Steve snorts derisively. “Always a catch.”

“It’s not a catch,” Tony says. “It’s a request.”

“I’d like to go back to my cell now,” Steve says.

“No,” Tony says, “You have every right to hate me, but you need to listen to this–”

“I don’t need to listen to anything you have to say,” Steve snarls, rising from the couch.

“I am asking you, Steve,” Tony says desperately. He feels his face twitching, and he knows it’s because he’s going to get upset again, he’s going to lose this if he doesn’t wrap it up soon.

“I don’t owe you anything,” Steve says, and it hangs there, between them.

Tony knows. The debt is entirely his.

“You’re getting the pardon,” he says with conviction he doesn’t feel. He reaches behind him for the tablet that’s lying on his desk. “This is all I’m asking you to do, and if you say no, I won’t ask you again. I want you to reconsider. You’ve missed a lot –“

“Everyone keeps saying that,” Steve says. “When are you going to understand that it doesn’t change anything. I couldn’t care less what you’ve arranged. Is it going to bring Bill back? Is it going to make the Avengers a team again?” Steve’s eyes narrow into slits of blue. “Is it going to make me trust you again?”

Tony grips the desk so hard his knuckles turn white and tries to find his voice.

“Just listen,” he says, holding the tablet out. “Take this. Look at what we’ve done with the Initiative, that’s what we’re calling it, look at the numbers, look at how much good it’s done.”

“You still haven’t asked me for anything,” Steve says, not taking the tablet.

“I want you to manage the SHRA’s implementation. Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. Again. Full deal.”

There isn’t even the faintest hint of surprise in Steve’s face. He doesn’t protest, he doesn’t laugh. He doesn’t react, and Tony wonders if anything he’s saying is even getting through.

“And this has nothing to do with what you told me last night,” Steve says, finally.

“No,” Tony says.

He’s lying, of course – it has everything to do with what he let slip in his terrible pathetic self-indulgence. Premature, he thinks. It was a childish thing to do, he knows, but what can he do? He’s always been terrible susceptible to this particular vice.

(He tells himself it was only a matter of time, but that’s dishonest, too.)

Steve stares at him, his eyes dim and hollow and full of bottomless doubt, and Tony has to look away.

“Forget what I said last night,” Tony says. “I was drunk.”

“That’s not an excuse you can use,” Steve says. “I don’t –“

“Don’t,” Tony says, feeling shame pooling in his cheeks. “I don’t want an answer right now, I just want you to read, you can read tonight, you can look over everything, there’s security clearance on there - I  - it’s not perfect, but it’s good.” He hasn’t figured out what to do if Steve says no.

“Yeah?” Steve says. “You think Luke and Peter approve of the good you’ve done?”

Tony blinks at him, blinks, tries to keep his face together. It’s cruel, to bring them into this, but Tony needs reminders like that, doesn’t he, needs to remember that he’s supposed to hurt for what he’s done.

He tries for indifference.   

“I don’t know,” he says, “but if you do this, I bet they’ll register.”

“They won’t,” Steve says, “it’s a matter of principle.”

“You  _are_  principle,” Tony snaps, hurt. So very tired of being sad. “It should be you, in charge of this, I – I’m not cut out for this bit, Steve, it was always supposed to be you. I don’t trust anyone else to do this, no one else would have access to the database.”

Steve stares at him for a moment, and takes the tablet.

The guards whisk him away to real quarters, but Tony doesn’t watch them go.

He thinks that maybe Steve means every hurtful thing he’s been throwing his way.

It’s probably karma.

He sits for a long while after they’ve gone, his eyes glassy and red, his glass abandoned on the coffee table, the taste of disappointment bitter on his tongue.

\- - -

_Steve finds him alone in the sub-basement having a staring contest with a half-empty bottle of Johnny Walker Blue. It’s 3 am, but Steve’s still dressed in jeans, and Tony wonders if he’s been waiting up for him. Probably, even though he told him he wouldn’t get back from Kyoto until late._

_He feels ill, like his brain is too dry, like it’s pulling away from the inside of his skull. His eyes aren’t working right, and he can’t remember the last time he really slept. He’s rocking in his swivel chair so he doesn’t puke, his chin resting on the workbench for extra stability, and Steve straddles a chair he’s dragged over from the corner without saying a word.  He reaches over and tugs the bottle ever so gently out of Tony’s line of sight._

_Tony doesn’t bother to pretend he hasn’t been sobbing._

_“Tony,” Steve says, and pushes a cup of water at him. He’s been expecting this, then._

_“I loved her,” he says. “Why does this keep happening to me,” he asks, and he can't help the anguish that's spilling into his words._

_And then he vomits all over Steve’s shoes._

_“Oh, Tony,” Steve says, sighing._

_“Guh,” Tony says._

_Tony thinks he should be apologizing, for doing this all over again, but it’s so easy to let the alcohol warm through him, to let everything slide –_

_Steve is toeing off his shoes, and bless him, he’s not even making a face. He strips off his socks, too, and hefts Tony into his arms. Tony doesn’t argue, because he’s been too drunk to walk for several hours now. Steve makes for the elevator, his bare feet smacking across the cement._

_Steve holds him for the entire ride up, and Tony mashes his face into his shoulder like the lush he is. Steve smells like laundry and aftershave, and it’s almost enough to settle his stomach. The lighting is too harsh, though, to be comfortable on his eyes, and it calls everything into sharper relief, focuses his pain, makes him wince away into Steve's body._

_He remembers pressing Ru up against the doors, once, her skirt hiked up to her waist, how she giggled and fumbled for the hold button –_

_The thought is enough to rouse the nausea again._

_“There’s nothing I can do,” Tony says, the words clumsy in his mouth. “I’m such an idiot, Steve, I – she’s not coming back, I can’t make up for this.”_

_Steve stares straight ahead, but his deep voice sounds deep in his chest, thrums against Tony’s cheek.  “Tony,” he says, with impossible gentleness, “You don’t have to atone for this.”_

_“No,” Tony mumbles, “I do, I have to fix – avenge, we’re Avengers, I have to do something.”_

_“You’ll fix it,” Steve says, the lilt of his voice so damn convincing Tony just has to argue._

_“No I won’t,” Tony mumbles, “I feel so sick, Steve.”_

_“You will,” Steve says softly. “I know you.”_

_“I had no business dreaming,” Tony murmurs._

_The elevator dings open._


	8. Damned if You Don't

“I’m sorry,” Steve’s voice says, cutting into Tony’s dreams. 

Tony sits up with a jerk. The clock reads 2:17, he’s barely been asleep for an hour.

Steve is standing by the window, backlit by the glow from the third engine filtering through the snow outside. His profile’s wrong, though, he’s too compact, his hair is wrong -

He’s wearing his armor.

“Where did you get that,” Tony says, and he feels his heart pounding in his chest, because he’s not entirely sure Steve isn’t here to kill him.

Steve sits with some preternatural grace on the edge of Tony’s bed, and Tony sees he’s managed to find the fucking shield, too. It glints in as he slings it off his arm and onto the bed.

Tony fists his hands in the coverlet.

“You need to pay attention,” Steve says. “You barely even went over Sharon's bloodwork.”

“Why are you here,” Tony says, “How the hell’d you override the door?”

“Listen to me,” Steve says, “don’t think, just do. Don’t trust anyone.”

Steve puts a gloved hand on Tony’s knee and Tony recoils, because it’s freezing, he can feel it through two layers of down comforter.

“What? Just talk to me, _damn_ it!”

Because Tony sees his face, pale and drawn in the scant light, the skin stretched too tight over bone, his eyes clouded and glassy beneath the cowl. He’s the wrong color, he looks dead, he looks fucking dead, and he reaches his ice-cold hands for Tony’s face -

Tony sits up from a dead sleep, panting like he’s sprinted across the deck.

He scans, but there’s no one in his room.

He lies in bed with his eyes open, his heart racing, trying to will his body to stop shaking. It’s the cold, it’s just the cold, it’s winter, the thermostat goes down at night. They’re at 45,000 feet. Just the cold.

That’s all it is.

He stares at the ceiling for what seems like hours until he drifts off again. 

\- - -

Tony walks out of his bedroom in nothing but boxers the next morning, the sun still hidden in the blue-white of the pre-dawn. The air is still chilly, and it’s still snowing, Tony can barely see the third engine through the vague flurry of white.

Steve is waiting in his living room.

He’s freshly showered, Tony can smell his shampoo, and he looks like a real person in jeans and a S.H.I.E.L.D. t-shirt, and Tony is overcome by a powerful desire to flee.

“You could have knocked,” he says, running a hand absently through his hair.

Steve sits very still on the couch, the tablet Tony gave him resting in his hands. “You’re a terrible liar,” he says.

“I’m sorry,” Tony says, “I’m sure we could have set up an appointment if you’re just here to insult me.”

“Why didn’t you tell me,” Steve says, and the cloud of anger is absent from his voice for the first time in a very long time.

“Tell you what –”

Steve holds out the tablet, and Tony reaches for it, and stops.

It’s the security footage, the stuff he deleted. That time he lost his shit in the morgue. He’s never watched it, but he looks at his harrowed, grief-stricken self, and he feels the heartache as if it were yesterday.

“Where did you find that,” Tony says, feeling terribly cold, “I deleted that.” Abort.

“Apparently you didn’t,” Steve says, “Nothing ever really goes away on the internet, didn’t you tell me that once?” Tony swears. He must have done a shit job during his blackout. Forgotten to overwrite. He maybe should have swapped out the hardware entirely.

“Did you hack into S.H.I.E.L.D?” Tony asks, holding his breath.

“I was taught by the best,” Steve says, as if it’s obvious.

Tony’s created a monster.

“You weren’t supposed to see that,” Tony says, ice in his stomach.

“Really?” Steve says, “Because it sounds like you had an awful lot you wanted to tell me.”

“It wasn’t you,” Tony says, swallowing the rawness in his throat.

“You didn’t know that,” Steve says.

“Well, it’s irrelevant now, you’re here,” Tony says, busying himself with coffee.

“It’s not,” Steve says, and Tony whirls around, brandishing a coffee filter.

“Would it have made a difference? If you’d known, would things have played out differently?”

“Maybe,” Steve says.

“Oh, bullshit,” Tony spits. “There’s no way you’d have just fucking rolled over and switched sides.”

Steve blinks. “You don’t trust me,” he says, as if he’s genuinely surprised.

Tony laughs and it rings hollow off the metal walls. “Should I? I did. That’s the problem, wasn't it?”

“You don’t get a monopoly on regret, you know,” Steve says. “It wasn’t just about the bill, I – you know that.”

Tony closes his eyes wills himself stop being so invested in this.

“I thought I knew,” he says, his voice is edged with anger. “I thought I knew a lot of things, but you – very helpfully clarified things, the other night.” He jabs the button on the coffee maker.

Steve stands up and tosses the tablet onto the couch. “You’re an idiot,” he declares.

“False,” Tony says, “I’m a genius. You’re naïve. And mad.”

Steve bristles. “This is it,” he says.

“This is what,” Tony snaps.

“This, right here, is what we’ve both been dancing around for years!” Steve bellows.

“You said you weren’t fucking interested!” Tony shouts back, throwing the coffee filters at the wall. “ _There is no us_ , Steve, that’s what you said!”

“I was angry,” Steve says, “it makes me angry seeing you like that,” and his face is worked into a grimace, and Tony can see every bit of stubble on his jaw.

“Yeah, well, I was – you know what? It doesn’t even matter,” Tony says, turning away.

Steve grabs his arm to pull him back.

“No,” he says. “Tell me the truth.”

“I’ve always told you the truth,” he says, looking away.

“Look at me,” Steve hisses.

Tony looks, and he knows why he hasn’t been. Because Steve’s eyes are so very blue, and he didn’t think he’d get to see this again, but there he is, and those are his hands around Tony’s biceps, that’s his handsome face screwed up in anger and frustration and something else Tony can’t make out. That’s the ghost of something that took years to build between them.

Tony looks, and wants to say something, but the words won’t come.

Steve is still taking him to pieces with his eyes, and he sees now, all the hurt he’s put there, how much older he looks, how very cold they’ve become. It’s the look that Steve had when Bucky came back from the dead, when he was so very angry, when he secreted himself away in his ire.

It’s meant for Tony, now.

“Why do you do this,” Steve says. “Why won’t you just admit it?”

Tony thinks that’s just a little unfair, because it takes two, but it doesn’t matter, because Steve grips his chin very roughly with his hand, tilts Tony's face up to meet his, and kisses him.

It’s swift and brutal and effective. Tony should have expected nothing less from Steve, but it feels so wrong, so easy – too easy, and Tony’s not entirely ready to let go of his self-loathing for this, because he hasn’t earned this yet.

He finds himself planting his hands on Steve’s massive shoulders and pushing him away.

“Jesus, Steve, what the fuck,” he says, touching his lips to make sure they’re still there.

Steve looks genuinely confused and – hurt. “I thought you wanted this,” he says, and there’s that edge of anger again. 

“I do,” Tony splutters, “but we can’t just – you aren’t – this isn’t fixing - FUCK, this is such a bad idea.”

Tony needs a minute, he needs a fucking day, to process, but Steve is already stepping closer, insinuating himself in Tony’s space, and he smiles.

“You know, that never would have stopped you before,” Steve says. “Why can’t we,” he whispers with a quiet intensity Tony could never have imagined. He ghosts his hand over Tony’s hip.

“That was before you died,” Tony says.

“Tony,” Steve says, and he is touching Tony in ways he’s never touched Tony before, there is nothing casual about this, there is nothing platonic about the way his fingertips graze the waistband on his briefs.

“Steve,” Tony says, and he’s not sure if he’s protesting or yielding, “You don’t want this. You – are you even thinking? You just lost Sharon, you were fucking – you hated me yesterday.” Steve is – good, he’s good, and Tony’s not, and Tony doesn’t deserve any of this, Tony is going to ruin him. And it's not fair, it's so much harder now, because he can’t do this, but he wants to. Steve’s been on his lips, now. He will remember the taste of Steve on his lips always.

“Don’t tell me how I feel,” Steve says, and presses impossibly closer. “I’m telling you what I want.”

He thinks of Steve’s face, gaunt and pale in the moonlight, thinks of how he wanted to curl up and die when he saw his body on that table, thinks of loss and want and ache. Tony thinks if he has to bear that again, knowing what he knows, he won’t make it.  

This is his chance.

Don’t think.

_Coward._

Tony can’t make this decision. Tony has never been able to make this decision, not when Steve found out he was Iron Man, not after, not now, not ever. He’s stuck, staring into Steve’s striking face, pressed up against the solid mass of his body.

“This is my fault, remember?” Tony says, feeling utterly helpless.

“Yeah,” Steve says, “It is,” and presses his lips to Tony’s with bruising passion all the same.

It must have been Tony, all along. Always, Tony dares to let himself think.

Steve pulls him in, kisses him desperately, and Tony reciprocates like he’s dying, like he’ll never feel this again. He lets it happen. He wants this, even though every fiber in his body is screaming it’s wrong, to let it go.

Steve is getting his fingers under Tony’s shirt, running his hands over the curve of Tony’s ass, trailing his fingers over Tony’s bare skin.Tony thinks maybe he’s forgotten how to feel, because Maya touching him wasn’t like this. It’s all he can do to let himself be dragged along, to lose himself in Steve’s touch, to tamp down on the guilt that’s trying to well up to the surface, the sneaking suspicion that he’s going to hate himself for this tomorrow, that he’s going to find a way to hurt Steve, again, like he hurt Ru and Pepper and Maya and Ty–

Steve is pulling and pushing him, he’s losing his footing, but Steve is stronger, Steve’s always been stronger, and Tony lets himself be pulled, dazed, stupid from too many things he’s denied himself, itching to be made whole again. The bedroom door hisses shut behind them, and the sun is rising now, the light is coming in through the windows and falling across the bed in blazing strips that will be gone in another hour. Steve lays Tony down onto the bed that’s still mussed from a restless night’s sleep, and Tony goes, lies on his back, his arms still reaching for his soldier. 

Steve pulls off his shirt, stalks around the bed. Climbs over Tony and dips his head down to kiss him again. He’s beautiful, all hard lines and firm muscle, all tightly coiled power, looming over Tony. Steve presses his mouth against Tony’s throat, presses a broad hand to Tony’s chest. He’s straddling Tony’s hips, Tony can feel the flex of his thighs, and he's so warm, so solid. Steve lowers himself, lets his weight fall over Tony’s supine form, and the weight Steve’s hot flesh against his is enough to make Tony grind up automatically. He shudders, he moves because he needs. He’s been desperate for this for too long.

Tony wonders how they got here from ripping at each other in the streets.

Steve has been desperate too, apparently. He’s straining his pants. Tony can feel the rough denim of his jeans against his bare skin, can feel the warm press of Steve’s erection against his thigh. 

“Are you sure?” Tony is half-hoping he’ll reneg, he’ll decide this was all a mistake -

Steve looks down at him like he doesn’t believe what he’s hearing, and then he bends his neck to suck at Tony’s throat. “Don’t you want this?” he murmurs. 

Tony closes his eyes and leans into the wet of Steve’s mouth, lets him lick and suckle and mouth his way down into the hollow of Tony’s collarbone. “God, yes, I do-”

_But I shouldn’t,_ he doesn’t say.

His breath comes heavy and fast, and it’s all he can do not to shudder and claw at Steve for more, to wrap his arms around Steve and draw him in closer and never ever let go. He runs his hands over Steve’s body, everywhere, the muscles he’s seen so many times and never been able to have as his own.

Of course he wants him desperately. Steve, alive. 

His, maybe.

But Steve is pulling away, is sitting back on his heels with a flush in his cheeks and sweat beading out from under his tawny hair. “Over, turn over,” he pants, breathless, as he swings one of his legs over Tony’s body to let him move. His hands drift to Tony’s hip to settle on his shoulder, to facilitate. Tony’s hard and dazed and dizzy, and he’s more than willing to oblige, willing to let Steve call the shots, willing, Steve can do whatever he wants, he just needs Steve’s hands on him. He lets Steve flip him over, lets him run his strong hands over his shoulder blades, and this isn’t bad at all, because now he has some friction against the sheets. He grinds into the bed a little as Steve straddles him again, and Steve is leaning down to kiss the back of his neck, wide-mouthed and suction enough to draw bruises from his skin. And then he bites, sinks his teeth into the curve of his neck, his almost-shoulder.

Tony hisses, because he’s sore and that’s going to leave a mark, but he leans into it, and he jerks against the mattress, because it’s what he needs.

Trust Steve to know exactly what he needs.

Steve is mouthing down his back now, licking at his skin, just barely ghosting his teeth over each vertebra, and his hands are kneading at Tony’s ass, playing his nerves until they sing. Tony thinks Steve is going to fucking go for it and rim him until he cries and then –

And then Tony feels his arms being pulled behind him, feels his wrists being twisted into a convenient package for Steve to pin with one hand. He flexes his thighs beneath Steve’s weight, wiggles his arms a bit, tests the resistance and finds he can’t move an inch.

He unburies his head in the pillow he’s been breathing into, and turns to the side. He can’t see much, but he can hear Steve breathing above him. “I’d rather you didn’t,” he says, pulling at his arms, because there’s still a lot of mislaid trust in Tony’s past.

Steve leans down, kisses his ear, breathes, hot against it, and Tony moans against his better judgment. “It’s ok,” Steve says. “You need to relax. Trust me.”

“Ok,” Tony breathes, because he doesn’t want to ruin this. He doesn’t need his arms, it’s fine.

Steve kisses his hairline, kisses his ear, kisses, and Tony feels him groping at his ass, running the backs of his fingers over the curve, dipping into the cleft to rest against him.

“Mm,” he groans into the sheets. “Lube,” he says, “is in, ah - the – the drawer.”

Steve doesn’t move from where he’s settled on Tony’s thighs, but Tony hears the quiet snick of the cap being opened, feels his ass being spread apart and Steve pouring the lube onto his skin, cold and slick and oh, Steve is doing things with the pads of his fingers, teasing, horrible, wonderful things, and Tony bucks a little.

Steve chuckles and pushes the tip of his finger in. 

It’s too intimate, he thinks. It’s too fast, too much. Steve would never do this for him. Steve hated what he had with Tiberius, he’s sure there’s more, there’s volumes of disapproval, he doesn’t understand –

Steve curls his finger just enough for Tony to feel it. 

Tony writhes. It hurts, but it won’t soon, and Steve works him open and it all subsides, everything recedes until all Tony feels is some desperate, wanting ache. He’s tight and tense, and Steve takes his time running his finger around, pulling and flexing, until Tony gives a little and whines an embarrassing little whine. Steve pushes his finger the rest of the way in, and he’s warm, and it feels like a lot. Tony knows there’s no rush, but he wants all of Steve now, and it hurts and burns but he likes it, he wants what comes next, he wants to be remade with Steve inside him.

“I – can we – fuck - do this on my back? It – ah – hurts less, I want to see you, I wanna see your face,” Tony gasps.

Steve works his finger around, drags it out and pushes back in, firm without being rough, but not gentle. Tony supposes you can’t be gentle and do this, and really, he’s being an impatient little shit, because he’s backing onto Steve’s finger now, he’s shimmying his hips to get better leverage. He wants more.

“Shh,” Steve says, and he’s panting too, because Tony’s taken his breath. “It’ll be better this way, relax.” Tony’s mildly disappointed, but they can do this face to face later, and anyway, Steve is coming undone and he’s the one to do it and Steve is twisting his huge fucking finger around -

“Steve,” he moans.

Steve curls his finger, and what must he think of Tony writhing beneath him like this?

“Yeah,” Tony breathes. “Yeah, there, just – aaah –“

Steve pulls his finger out entirely, a little too fast. “What do you want, Tony?” he leans down to murmur in Tony’s ear.

“Steve,” he says into the sheets, because it’s too playful, because he wants Steve to care, because he’s too invested. Always too invested. “Don’t be a fucking tease, come on –“

Steve breathes a laugh into Tony’s ear. “You love it,” he says. “Don’t pretend.”

Tony makes a noise of quiet defeat into the sheets. “Yeah,“ he says, hiding his face in a pillow. Tony is panting like an animal and clenches his toes and hard against his sheets. 

He’ll take whatever Steve is willing to give him. 

“I’m ready,” he says, breathless, even though he’s not. He doesn’t care, it’s going to burn anyway, it’s just a matter of determining the nature of the ache at this point. “I want it, I’m ready, fuck me -”

“No, you’re not,” Steve says, and lines himself up anyway, “but I’ll oblige you.”

Tony can’t remember if Steve’s ever allowed his own pleasure to supersede Tony’s comfort, but he doesn’t care, because Steve is pushing into him agonizingly slowly, spreading his legs further apart with his powerful thighs, gripping his wrists so tightly he’s sure there will be bruises tomorrow, settling his slick hand on Tony’s hip. 

Tony feels Steve lean down over him, feels him fit his massive body over Tony’s spine, feels his breath tickling hot on his ear.

“You’re going to feel this,” Steve says.

Tony lets out a throaty whine and breathes, and he feels Steve’s weight press, heavy, on his back as he pants into the pillow.

Steve braces his hand on the bed next to Tony’s head, and thrusts the rest of the way in.

He stays there, for a minute, pressing himself as tightly against Tony as he’ll go with Tony’s hands still trapped in his between them, and he was right, Tony wasn’t ready, because it burns and it’s hot and tight and full, but Tony can’t bear to have him move away.

But the burn subsides, after what feels like an embarrassingly long time, and Tony feels the drag as Steve pulls out.

“This is right,” Steve says, his lips brushing the back of Tony’s neck. “God, Tony, you’re finally mine,” Steve moans, like it’s a prayer, and Tony doesn’t argue, because he knows he hasn’t been anyone else’s for a very long time.

He snaps back in.

Tony feels it.

It’s so nice to not be hated. 


	9. A Pain That I'm Used To

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I mean, read the tags.

Steve fucks like a stallion.

He pins Tony down, whispers obscenities in Tony’s ear, and Tony lies there, all his tricks laid bare, all his armor stripped, the smartass peeled away. He loses the theatrical moans he usually does with his partners. The belligerence. I’ve wanted this for years, Steve says, God, Tony. He takes it, the way Steve thrusts a little too deep, how Steve is still holding his hands up behind him, the way it feels more like lust and less like love for something he’s buried so deep he’s never even allowed himself to entertain the possibility. He lets himself be lost, he surrenders to the proficiency of Steve’s perfect flesh, and he feels so very, very small.

After Steve comes inside him with a gasp, after he ruts into Steve’s hand until he ruins the sheets, when the effervescence of lust and shock and need begin to leave him, Steve pulls out and rolls off. They stare at each other, dazed and sated, Steve’s chest rising and falling and catching the morning light.

They just crossed that line, that one they’ve both been toeing for years now.

“I can’t believe we did that,” Tony says quietly, when he’s gotten his breath back.

“We did it,” Steve says, barely panting now. His lungs are accustomed to far more than this. Even so, there’s the faintest sheen of sweat on his collarbone, the edges of his hair just barely damp.

“I didn’t know you drove stick,” Tony says. “I didn’t know, and we just - where did that even come from?” Because Steve is Steve, and Steve’s never –

But Steve is. Doing this with him. Naked in his bed.

“Easy to miss things when you’re so focused on your own charade,” Steve says impassively, closing his eyes, and Tony works to take it as a joke instead of insensitivity. It hurts. Is it supposed to hurt? Has he lost his sense of humor entirely in the past months?

Tony doesn’t know what to do, he doesn’t know how to navigate these waters.

Tony wipes his hand on his chest and mumbles, “Ok, let’s. Talk to me.”

He opens his eyes as Tony’s rolling himself in a sheet, but he yanks it back down, runs a hand covetously over Tony’s bare chest.

“What do you want me to say?” he says, toying with one of Tony’s nipples. He likes to touch, and Tony files that away. It’s so novel, so alarming, so lazy in a way it shouldn’t be, as if they’ve already settled back into what they were and more, as if nothing’s passed between them these past months. As if they weren’t ready to kill each other once upon a time.

“What are you doing?” Tony asks, “I – stop, I’m trying to talk to you.” He bats Steve’s hand away and pulls the sheet back around him. 

“I’m not allowed to touch you?” Steve says. “Is Tony Stark embarrassed?” He laughs.

“No, I’m - can you not, please?” he says, annoyed, “I’m serious, this is like, out of left fucking field –“

“What are you having trouble with,” Steve says, leaning over him, his face inches from Tony’s, his hand working downward again. “The part where this is reciprocal now, or the part where I fucked you into the mattress?” He runs his fingers over Tony’s bottom lip, still swollen and pink from Steve’s stubble.

Tony has the strangest urge to flinch away from his touch. But it’s hypnotic, almost. His casual possessiveness. The way his eyes are glimmering.

“Why do you keep looking at me like that?” Tony says, determined not to glance away.

“Like what,” Steve says.

“Like that, like you still secretly hate me,” he says, feeling astonishingly vulnerable.

Steve’s face darkens and he pulls away. “Did you think this would fix everything, just like that?”

Tony doesn’t breathe for a minute. 

“I thought it might be a start,” he says, and his own voice sounds small. “That’s - this was you, Steve, this was your.” 

Steve says, “I’m still mad, but it’s not a secret, Tony.”

Tony closes his eyes and turns all of his attention to keeping his own heartbeat steady. This is when they always leave. This is when it starts. Nice fucking you, have a nice life. 

“Please don’t go,” Tony hears himself say. 

“Tony,” Steve says, hurt and soft and surprised all at once. 

“I don’t know how to do this,” Tony says. “I don’t know how to be this with you.”

“Nothing’s changed,” Steve says mildly, stroking his hand absently up the line of Tony’s abs, skimming his fingertips over his sweat-drenched skin.

“How can you say that, you’re in my bed –”

“What am I doing wrong?” Steve interrupts.

“You’re not, I’m just -”

“Did you not want this,” Steve says quietly, and his eyes are blue and hurt and Tony feels like a complete shit. “Did you not want me?”

“No, I’m sorry – I promise, I do, I cannot _tell you_ how much I want you, Steve, it’s just – you were just dead, Steve, and now you aren’t, and it’s a lot,” he says, burying his face in the pillow.

“It shouldn’t matter,” Steve says indignantly. “Why are you so determined to make everything into a catastrophe?”

That’s fair, probably. 

Steve’s right, Tony should just be – basking, he should be thrilled, he should be over the awfulness that’s been life without Steve, why can’t he just stop ruining things.

“Because what if I lose you again,” Tony says with painful honesty.

“You won’t,” Steve says. “You're being ridiculous.”

Tony wants to say no and that’s not good enough and talk to me but Steve is arranging his body over Tony’s, wrapping him bodily in warmth and muscle and strength, breathing deep into his neck.  It’s comforting, Steve’s warm flesh against his own. Steve, warm, and there and alive.

He spends the rest of the morning in dreamless sleep, for the first time in months, drowsing in his enormous bed with his Captain, his thighs sticky with sweat and come.

\- - -

When he wakes with his head throbbing, aching all over, there are waves breaking against his window, and Steve is gone.

Tony’s not sure what he was expecting, really. Flowers. A mid-morning blowjob, maybe. A note.

I love you.

Tony shuts that thought right the hell down, because he’s a grown man and it doesn’t do to moon when he knows, full well, that he doesn’t get to be happy.

\- - -

Apparently, while Tony was sleeping, someone leaked the news of Steve’s return, and the headlines light up his neural pathways as soon as he brings the filters down again.

_– Stark Enterprises up 47 points on the Dow as of this morning –_

_– apparently a free man once again, as President Obama has reportedly agreed –_

_– a statement Interpol has released, the Prime Minister of Latveria has made the Most Wanted –_

_– Secretary Kooning to release a statement –_

_– Director Stark’s personal involvement in the recovery of Rogers’ body –_

Tony literally could not care less.

By the time he slogs up to the big conference room, he’s read through the briefings he missed and Dugan is waiting for him with a scowl he’s doing his best to hide. Tony isn’t sure why he’s annoyed, it’s not like S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn’t know their information leaks. They’ve already released official statements, and the death threats (5 for Steve, 22 for Tony) aren’t realistically a problem when he can eliminate the threats with his brain.

S.H.I.E.L.D.’s publicity manager conferences with him anyway, though, and rambles on about transparency and full disclosure and delicate matters. All the major networks are calling for Tony to make a statement, for Steve to make a statement, and Tony imagines that maybe they can do it together, Captain America and Iron Man again.

Steve and Tony.

Washington is in an uproar. Most of the higher-ups are swarming, calling for his head on a platter, righteously offended because they weren’t told. Kooning is tickled, though, and somehow that’s more annoying than if he’d have been pissed.

“About damn time,” he says, “That man’s finally sorted himself out. Good for you, Stark.”

Tony’s paranoia kicks in, then, and he wonders for a fleeting second if Kooning’s bugged his bedroom and he knows they slept together, but that’s ridiculous, Extremis would have picked it up ages ago. He’s probably just thrilled he won’t have to harangue Tony to do his job anymore.

It’s Steve’s job now, but Steve is nowhere to be found.

It’s not that he’s pining, he’s not, but they’ve just seriously uprooted several life-truths Tony’s been clinging to, and he’s limping a little, and really, he has no fucking idea how to proceed. And if Tony can’t help but be a bit hurt that he didn’t even stick around so Tony could wake up next to him, well.

He’s had a trying few days, too.

\- - -

Tony’s headache has grown into a skull-splitting exercise in pain by the afternoon, so he raids Medical for painkillers. He slips into the pharmacy to quietly snag a bottle of Vicodin, because he’s not sure he can take triptans with the kind of shit he’s been putting his liver through recently.

“Yeah, you should maybe stop that, Tones,” a voice says from behind him.

Tony drops the bottle and whirls around, already sending the undersheath racing across his skin.

And then Happy is lying there.

He’s in a hospital, he’s in a fucking hospital room since 0.24 seconds ago, and Happy Hogan is half-upright, hooked up to a respirator, tubes in his arms, an oxygen mask taped to his face, blood-spotted bandages wrapped around his forehead.

Tony can’t feel his face, he can’t reach his brain, Happy is dead, he’s dead, Tony knows, because he pulled the plug, he did it, he’s responsible, he’s dead -

“That’s no way to be,” Happy says.

He’s paying, he must be, for killing them, he must be, that’s what this is, and Tony tries to think, to call up the lines of numbers and data and logic he knows best, think -

“You should really talk to Cap,” he says, sucking in a ragged breath, and his face is palsied on one side like he’s had a stroke. “You guys never talk. You gotta make sure.”

He looks at Tony, then, his eyes unfocused, out of sync, a corpse, talking to him, and this is so wrong, it’s so fucking wrong –

And just like that, the room rights itself.

Tony finds himself kneeling on the smooth metal floor of the very empty infirmary, the Vicodin bottle inches away from his hand. He reaches for it, but he misses, he’s shaking so badly.

No, he thinks. No, no, no. 

Other people hallucinate. 

\- - -

Tony is shit at neurology.

Sal’s better, but Sal is spinning around in a swivel chair, mildly stoned, waving his hands lazily in the air.

“Sal, help me, what the fuck do these mean,” Tony says, trying not to sound too frantic as he snaps the slices of his brain up on the lightboard.

“You’re fucked,” Sal says, and he bursts into cascading laughter that doubles him over. “I don’t fucking know. I’m an ethnobotanist, not a neurologist,” he deadpans. “You should call Maya, you’re like, her favorite science project.”

Tony sends the scans to Reed.

“Maya didn’t leave me a forwarding address,” he says. “I don’t have time to hunt her down, it’s getting worse. I didn’t pass out the other day because I was injured, I just – passed out. And these fucking – dreams,” he stutters, “If that’s what they are.”

_What if someone’s fucking with me again_ , he doesn’t say, because that fear is still a little too fresh. 

“I told you you shouldn’t have taken this job,” Sal says, and he’s pulling a packet of rolling papers out of his pocket. “Whatever you’re on, it sounds good.”

“Could you not do that here?” Tony says. “This is not the fucking yellow submarine.”

Sal frowns. “See? Sapped your soul right away.” He rolls his joint anyway.

Tony considers that. “Maybe,” he says.

“How are you holding up, anyway,” he says, lighting up.

“I’m holding,” he lies.

Sal snickers and takes a drag. He’s so out of place here, he’s never had a taste for the war and bureaucracy Tony’s married himself to.

“Ok,” he says, “I get it, you don’t wanna talk to the lowly medicine man -”

“I slept with him,” Tony says, simultaneously taking the security cams offline and cross-checking his scans with a those of a normal brain. There’s nothing, no anomaly he can see even with 2.5 billion points of reference. Maybe he needs an fMRI. “It was a probably a bad idea.”

“HA!” says Sal, positively jovial. “About damn time. If you’d done it years ago you probably could’a avoided this damn war that got you landed here in the first place. Wise is the man who makes love, not –“

“Exceedingly unhelpful,” Tony says, setting the machine up again.

“Are you happy?” Sal says.

Tony stops what he’s doing, because he doesn’t remember the last time anyone’s asked him that.

“I don’t have time to be happy,” he says, flicking the switch that makes the machine hum to life.

“You did better with the whole masked hero thing,” Sal says, “you haven’t been back to the tower in forever, maybe you just need to get out – ”

That’s where Steve went, because of course he’d want to go back, he’d want to tell the Av – Carol’s team himself, because he’s not like Tony, doesn’t do things from behind a network and a firewall. Steve’s a man of honor.

“Look at those when you come down, ok,” he says, already striding out the door.

\- - -

Someone pings him on one of the old Avengers channels when he’s over Queens.

“We need to meet,” comes Barnes’ voice.

“You cannot contact me like this,” Tony hisses, “I do not have time for you to -”

“You need to make time,” he says, and there’s something in his voice that makes Tony go cold in his climate-controlled shell, because what if he knows, he’s literally going to murder Tony in his sleep -

“What about,” he says.

“I’d rather not talk about it on open air,” Barnes says firmly, “We need to meet tonight.”

“Ok,” he says, “my place or yours?”

“Yours,” Barnes says, and cuts the line.

That’s not worrying at all.

\- - -

They’re in the living room when he lands on the helipad, and Extremis picks up the conversation before he even makes it inside.

This is so not what he thought it was going to be.

 “. . . except you were on our side before,” Peter’s voice comes.

“You don’t seriously expect us to go for this,” Luke is saying.

“And what happens when you die?” Logan says. “Cuz you will, Cap. Sooner or later.”

“Is that a threat?” Steve growls.

Tony walks into the living room.

They jump to their feet, all of them, except Carol, who doesn’t even look up from where she’s sitting with her head buried in her hands, and Steve, who was already standing. Peter’s skulking on the wall in the corner, wearing his old costume, the black one. Luke looks entirely unsurprised, but Logan’s extended his claws. They’re both in street clothes – costumes during the day are too high-profile now that Tony’s gotten his way, he’s sure.

Tony’s got clothes in the penthouse and a thousand unfinished projects stories and stories below them, underground, but he watches them turn to him one by one, watches the wariness and anger arrange themselves on their faces, and he knows he’s the one who doesn’t belong here.

“I knew this was bullshit,” Luke says, rounding on Steve, who’s dressed in a S.H.I.E.L.D. uniform. He looks every inch the part, especially the glaring daggers at Tony. It’s practically a requirement for the job now.

“Sorry I’m late,” Tony says, looking at Steve, “I guess I didn’t get the memo.” He looks at the three of them, half of his brain already working on erasing the security footage. “I don’t know if you know this, but you can’t be here.”

“Too late,” Peter says, looking from Steve to Tony. “You set us up.”

“It’s not a set-up,” Tony says firmly, “but you need to leave.”

“This is a parley, Tony,” Steve says.

Tony takes his helmet off.

“Excuse me, what?”

“You heard me,” Steve says. “This was my call –“

“Unbelievable,” Logan says suddenly.

Tony whirls around to look, and he’s up in Steve’s face, sniffing his hair, looking at Tony -

“Who’d’a thunk. You son of a bitch,” he says, turning back to Steve. “He's the only reason you’re doing this, isn’t it. Isn't it?” He levels a glare at Tony.

“I had nothing to do with whatever this is,” Tony says unconvincingly, and his chest feels cold and guilty somehow, “I don’t even know what –“

“Thought you were above conflicts of interest, Cap,” Logan snarls. 

“Hey,” Tony says sharply, “fuck off, Logan.”

“Gladly,” he says, and casually ducks off the edge of the balcony.

“What does he mean,” Peter whispers to Luke.

Luke looks at Tony with zero compassion, then back at Steve.

“Are we done?” Luke says.

Steve shoots an angry glance Tony’s way, as if to say this is your fault, and Tony knows he’s ruined whatever delicate operation this was, and he doesn’t even care, because Steve didn’t trust him enough to tell him first.

“Unless Director Stark has anything to add,” Steve says with venom. 

“I do, actually -”

“Enough.”

Carol picks her head up and glares at all of them in turn.

“You’ve heard the terms, you’ve had your pissing contest. That’s all,” she says, standing up. “Get out,” she says.

“Uh, no, actually, don’t,” Tony says, “Don’t fucking move –“

“You’re free to go,” Steve says, speaking over Tony, but Luke’s already beating a hasty retreat out the elevator that goes straight down to the hanger and Peter’s propelling himself out the window.

“Well, that went well,” Tony says, looking from Carol to Steve. “Oh, and by the way, you’re both fucking fired.”

“No, we’re not,” Carol says.

“What the hell,” Tony says, running a hand through his hair. “You can’t just invite them to tea, Steve, what were you thinking - ”

“I was thinking you were sleeping the day away, and one of us should take some action.”

“Wow, ok, you could have, I dunno, woken me up –“

“I offered them amnesty, all of them, whoever wants it,” Steve says sharply. “They have 10 days to think about it. Anyone comes forward, asks to register, clean slate. After the 10-day cutoff, we crack down.”

“Just like that,” Tony marvels.

“I’m doing this for you,” Steve says quietly. “This is what I came up with. Do you have a better solution?”

“No, I’ve been trying not to actively hunt them down, Steve! We tried amnesty,” he says, “it didn’t work.”

“Well, it will this time, because they trust me more than they ever trusted you,” Steve snaps. “Need I remind you I’m playing Judas here?”

Tony shuts his mouth, because that’s a little too close to home.

“We wanted to meet with them personally. We thought we owed it to them to hear it from Steve’s mouth. They haven’t seen him,” Carol says.

“Because my mouth isn’t good enough?” Tony says, rounding on her. “Fine. Do it your way.”

“I was doing my job,” Steve says. “Was I supposed to keep dicking around like you’ve been?”

“I’m outta here,” Carol says, and swan dives out of the open French doors.

“I wasn’t – dicking around, I never wanted to hunt them down!” Tony says. “You of all people should understand that.”

“No, but you haven't been trying to make it better, either,” Steve says curtly.

“Yeah, I was,” Tony says, but it sounds weak the moment it’s left his mouth. “I - the idea was to get them to register, not piss them off and drive them away.”

Steve snaps the folder he’s holding shut.

“You drove them away,” he says, “the minute you went to Washington and didn’t tell me and lobbied for this. I’m cleaning up your mess.”

Tony’s stomach roils.

“You said you weren’t mad at me,” he says.

“I’m not. It’s a statement of fact, not a judgment,” Steve says.

This is why he has Steve doing this, though, because Steve doesn’t let his feelings get in the way, hasn’t he proven that? Steve won’t lie to him, even if he doesn’t want to hear it.

“You need to have a little patience,” Steve says. “They’ll come around.”

“What if they don’t,” Tony murmurs, because he pretends not to, but he still has hope. And losing it, for real, for good - 

“Stop pouting,” Steve says. “I was honest with them. They’ll think about it. They trust me, they know I wouldn’t have done this unless I had a good reason.”

“Why are you doing this?” Tony says, Logan’s ire ringing fresh in his ears. “Because you feel like you owe me something?”

“Because you asked me to,” he says, like it’s the most obvious fucking thing in the world.

Tony doesn’t deserve him.

Steve is standing here, turning his back on everything he gave his goddamn life to prove, and he’s right, it’s almost been for nothing, because Tony’s been dragging his feet because he couldn’t even commit to enforcing this thing he’s fought for. Tony is just – not helping, because that’s what he does. He impedes. He ruins. This is is his mess, Logan and Steve and Peter and Luke and Jessica and Bill –

He wants to be better. Maybe he can, with Steve.

“You weren’t there,” Tony blurts out, “this morning, when I woke up.”

“I wanted to meet with Maria,” Steve says, and he doesn’t sound even remotely sorry.

“Oh,” Tony says, because of course Steve ran this by her, of course he did, he always thinks of everything. Things are always in good hands with Steve. “Ok, that’s – ok,“ he trails off.

“No,” Steve says, annoyed, “tell me, because this is obviously bothering you.”

“Did it mean anything to you?” Tony asks, feeling like he’s 16 again and blushing all over Dierdre Gates’ pink fucking sheets.

“Of course it did,” Steve says, “I –“

“Why aren’t you saying anything to me,” Tony says. “What, was this just a one-off thing, are we gonna pretend this never happened? What’s your deal, Steve? Because I honestly can’t fucking tell.” He knows he’s snapping, and Steve doesn't deserve that, either, but he’s tired and worn out and sick of trying to keep up.

He’s done pretending not to care about the only thing he really cares about.  

“Tony,” Steve says with an exasperated sigh.

“What?” he says, his voice cracking a little.

“You’re being ridiculous.”

“I’m not being ridiculous, this is a valid–”

“You can’t do everything by yourself,” Steve says, cutting him off, striding into his body, pressing himself up against Tony, and what is he doing, Carol’s crew could be around, there could be S.H.I.E.L.D. people tagging them, but he just reaches for Tony’s face, snakes his arms around Tony’s armored waist like it’s where they belong.

“You remember what happened last time you tried that?” Steve says, and Tony pretends he can’t feel the twinge in his gut. He remembers.

_Run_ , something says at the back of Tony’s mind.

He leans into Steve’s arms, and does his best to banish his doubts, because it’s easier not to argue.

\- - -

Tony waits in his quarters, and the dusky pink of the sunset fades to purple, to blue, to black.

Barnes doesn’t show.

He’s never contacted Tony like this before. He scans the area, but there’s nothing, no stealth tech, no unusual heat signatures. It’s not like him to forget. Maybe he’s delayed, Tony knows he’s running Fury’s ops, wherever he’s hiding. Doing some good, somewhere, while Tony cowers.

He has a drink while he waits.

That’s what he does now. Waits, for things to change (because they will), for things to fall apart (because they do), for other people to make moves so he can do damage control. They used to make plans, he and Steve, they used to head off stuff like this before it got too ugly. Acting, instead of reacting.

One drink turns into more, but it’s fine. He can stop if he needs to.

\- - -

Steve lets himself into Tony’s quarters at 2:57.

Tony is drunk.

Tony has moved past being able to stop, and he feels it swirling in his stomach, firing in his veins, the heady rush of freedom, this way of bridging the gap between what he’s become and what he used to be. It makes him feel human again, and he leans into the dizziness and the rotten despair, because this is the only thing he deserves to feel.

Steve is walking towards him, his S.H.I.E.L.D. suit lustrous in the dim lights.

“He never showed,” Tony says, and Steve doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but he feels he should offer something anyway. He never came home, after all.

He has no home to come back to.

Steve is dragging him out of his swiveling chair, and that’s bad, it’s bad, he’s too drunk for moving, he’s too drunk for resisting, and the feeds are swimming in his brain, sending him half-truths of a world outside in the snow he doesn’t visit anymore, locked in his flying ship, locked in this nightmare of superheroes and steel and the rule of law.

Steve is setting him on the couch, but he’s still got his bottle clutched tightly in his fist.

“How much have you had?” Steve is saying, tugging his leather collar open. He shouldn’t be wearing that, it’s wrong. He needs to be striped. Cerulean Blue. He’s lost his color.

“Why didn’t you stay,” Tony says, and his voice sounds strange, and far away.

“I had things to do,” Steve says. “I told you that.”

“You still hate me,” Tony says, “You didn’t leave me a note.”

“I told you to sleep at the tower tonight,” Steve says with a sigh.

“Stop,” Tony says, “Stop lying to me. I see it when you look at me,” he says, and he’s stringing words together because he won’t be consoled right now. “You do,” he says, “you still have it, the look, like at the mansion, like you want to punch my face in.” He rolls his head around, because it’s warm and buzzing, and he settles on taking another swig. He’s long lost his tumbler, but it’s ok, he can drink from the bottle, he’s secure in his knowledge of what a trainwreck he is.

“Tony,” Steve says, and his voice is all wrong, it’s hard and cold and tired.

“I fucking missed you,” Tony says, because Steve should know. “I thought I was never gonna see you again, and you’re still – you’re still.”

“I know,” Steve says, sitting on the edge of the coffee table. He perches, and eyes his bottle warily. 

“You don’t talk to me,” Tony says miserably, watching him. “You don’t know what to do with me.”

“Do you think this is easy for me?” Steve says unexpectedly. “Because it’s not.”

Tony raises the bottle to his lips again, but Steve is trying to pull it away.

“No,” he splutters around a mouthful of scotch, “Fuck off.” He grips it tighter.

Steve is doing that thing with his jaw, that thing where he’s sizing Tony up, where he sees everything Tony’s trying to hide, and he sits back and folds his arms and runs a hand over his face in frustration.

“You used to be better than this,” he says, and the disappointment in his voice is more than enough. Tony feels it, shame, clenching in his gut, winding its way up into his chest.

“I know, I fucking know,” he says, and he’s on the edge, he feels himself about to topple and there’s nothing he can do. It could be the alcohol, but he doesn’t remember, he’s not paying attention, he hurts. “What can I do,” he says, more to himself than to Steve. “I can’t get it right, I can’t – you saw them. They despise me,” he says, and when he lifts his face, his cheeks are wet.

Steve snatches the bottle out of his hands before he can react, and this time he’s successful. He gets up, and Tony drifts, he sinks into the leather of the couch, and then Steve is back, pressing water into his hands, but he can’t hold it. He spills half of it in his lap.

“Tony,” he tries again, “You need to stop.”

Tony knows, Steve doesn’t have to tell him this, he knows what he is. A drunk. A waste. Self-indulgent.

Because he did, he used to be stronger, he used to have self-control and honor and people used to trust him. They used to need him.

Iron man.                            

Tony feels tears leaking out of his eyes. He can see it, Steve walking away as he fell to his knees and started a fire in that shitty dive, and he can’t do that again, and this is it, Steve’s giving up on him again, he’s going to leave -

“What do you need from me,” Steve says. “Tell me how to help you.”

Tony stares, because there’s never anything anyone can do.

“Hurt me,” he finds himself mumbling.

Steve stares back at him.

“Tony –“

“Hurt me,” he says again, his voice grown hollow and dark. It’s a crazy idea, and it might be the scotch talking, but it’s a good idea, it’s right, he knows it’s right. Steve’s here, after all, there’s no more darkness underneath this, there’s nothing he hasn’t already seen.

“Is that really what you want?” Steve says, and Tony wonders vaguely why he’s not appalled, why he’s not protesting, why he’s not fighting him on this.

“Do you want to?” Tony spits.

Steve is quiet for a long moment.

“Sometimes,” he says.

“Then do it,” he says, “I deserve it.”

“You’re drunk,” Steve says.

“I don’t care,” he slurs, already reaching for Steve where he’s sitting. “I mean it,” he says, “Mess me up, I don’t care, just – fucking – make me feel something.” It sounds like begging, but this is where he lives, this is what he knows now, there’s no point in lying to himself.

He wants bruises to go along with his heartache.

But Steve is on him, then, and Tony shouldn’t be surprised, he’s always been a quick study.

“You need it, don’t you,” Steve says, his face starry with wonderment, and he shoves his thigh between Tony’s, climbs onto his lap, wrenches his chin up so he can see Steve’s face. “Is this how you atone?” Steve breathes.

It’s just what Tony doesn’t need to hear. It’s everything he’s been internalizing, and Steve – Steve sees right through him. Always. Still. The others - they’re not so intimately familiar with Tony’s demons, they don’t know how to wield the knife just so.

“No,” Tony says, despair rough in his throat, “I don’t think I can.”

“No,” Steve agrees, “Maybe not.”

He kisses Tony with what feels like fury. He bites and scratches and scrapes too hard, and Tony lets him.

This feels right, he thinks dimly, as he tastes the trickle of blood in his mouth.

Steve is dragging him up, and he feels like he’s falling, but it’s just sagging, he’s just going along with gravity, because it’s easier that way, when you let yourself be led, he thinks. Steve is in his mouth, sucking Tony’s bottom lip into his, drawing it out with his teeth, stinging and abrading and bruising.

Tony wonders when he learned to be like this. If he always had this in him, building.

Steve clutches at his ass, and he’s strong, so much stronger than Tony. He can leave bruises without even trying, but he is, and Tony feels the way his fingertips push into his skin, the way he’s jostled around on Steve’s lap, the way he’s been hauled to his knees and held up by Steve’s strength alone.

Tony struggles, because it does hurt, and because he’s too drunk to sit still and it’s the only way he can be an active participant. But Steve tugs him in closer, licks into his mouth a little more ferociously, scrapes his teeth along the line of Tony’s jaw. He wrenches Tony’s shirt over his head, and Tony tries to help, but he’s too slow, his hands are leaden with alcohol and fatigue. Steve works a hand into Tony’s pants, rips the belt from its loops, shoves his hand down the small of Tony’s ass and into his briefs.

Oh. Steve is hungry for that. 

Tony thinks he doesn’t care. Steve can have what he wants. 

Tony lets his head flop forward onto Steve’s shoulder, because it’s too much trouble to hold it up. Steve must not like that, because he fists his hand in Tony’s hair and pulls him back. Tony can’t make his eyes focus right, but Steve looks flushed, there’s sweat shining on his temples.

“Still want me?” Tony says, wanting Steve to let him go, wanting Steve to tear him apart.

“Do you want me?” Steve counters, palming him under his briefs, raking his fingers down Tony’s cock.

“I want you to hurt me,” Tony says again, rolling his hips even as Steve is squeezing him too tightly. “That’s what I want.” Steve spits into his hand.

“I heard you,” Steve says, his voice deadly calm.

He breaches Tony with two fingers.

Tony isn’t ready for that, but Steve stares at him, bunches his hand tighter in Tony’s hair, pulls his head down to the side and sucks at his neck well past the point of pleasure.

“Ow,” Tony gasps, “ow, there’s – go, it’s right over there, lube –“

“No,” Steve says, “you wanted it this way.”

“Nn,” Tony whimpers, and he tries to squirm away, because it burns, he’s not slick enough and he’s too tense and it stings and smarts. Steve’s not having it, though, and he brings the hand in his hair down to Tony’s shoulder and holds him there as he fucks his fingers around inside him. He swipes over Tony’s prostate, brutal and efficient, and Tony can feel the creeping edge of pleasure chasing the pain.

It’s too much, though, too direct, and it hurts. Tony moans and tries to push away, but Steve holds him, settles his hand on Tony’s hip, twists his fingers just so, shoves them back in too roughly, until Tony is groaning in pain and Steve is smiling wickedly.

This is what he needs, he tells himself, to be taken apart by someone better. Rebuilt. Structurally sound.

“Steve,” Tony slurs, “please –“

Steve backhands him across the face.

Tony gasps, because he can feel his nose bleeding, trickling into his open mouth as he pants. He wasn’t expecting that. He tries to breathe through it, because this is what he asked for, but Steve is twisting one of his nipples and he can’t stop himself from yelping in pain.

Tony searches his face, looks for some hint of resistance or remorse or regret, but Steve is panting, flushed, obviously aroused, his eyes dark and wild, lost in the shadowing on his face.

It’s not a look that suits him, Tony thinks, dimly.

Tony comes with a strangled cry he can’t stop, and Steve plunges his fingers even deeper. He rocks and whines helplessly, clutching uselessly at Steve’s leather, lightheaded and ill and torn to pieces.

He tries to breathe, tries to gasp through the pain spasming in his muscles, but Steve kicks Tony’s knees back, and he pulls Tony down by the hair to settle his head between Steve’s thighs. Tony’s still panting, still trying to recover, but Steve has other plans. He’s undone his pants, he’s pulled himself out, and he drags Tony’s mouth down, presses a palm into the flat of his back, pushes him onto his stomach, pins him to the couch –

Steve is in Tony’s mouth, then, and he tastes like blood and leather. It’s not going to work, his mouth is too dry, he’s had too much, he can’t get his tongue to make words. Steve doesn’t seem to care, though, and he plants his hands on either side of Tony’s head and forces him down, all the way, and Tony splutters and wonders when this became his night.

He tries to work his head up and down, to keep it at his pace, but Steve is pulling his hair, and it hurts, and Tony finds himself choking, unable to move as Steve thrusts up into his mouth. He mumbles weakly around Steve’s dick, but Steve is just holding him, fucking up into his face, and he’s so hard, he shouldn’t be so into this, it’s wrong, but it’s the least Tony can do, he thinks, Steve’s put up with so much of his shit lately –

He moans and tries to buck away, because he can’t breathe, and he feels like he’s going to puke again. He hasn’t eaten a real meal in a day or two, just coffee and scotch and a scarfed croissant this morning, and Steve is hitting the back of his throat, and it’s too much, and he chokes –

He should be appalled at what he’s doing, at what Steve is doing to him. This is what he wanted, though. He can do this. It’s easier than being accountable.

Steve comes down his throat, and holds Tony down until he’s done. Tony doesn’t swallow all of it, but he tries. He can’t keep his mouth shut, and some of it dribbles over his chin as he gasps for air. He rests his head on Steve’s thigh, because Steve’s hand is still wound painfully in his hair. He just needs a minute, he thinks vaguely, he just has to be still for a minute and everything will be fine.

His pants feel sticky, in the front, in the back, too, and he reaches a hand behind him with considerable effort and feels. His fingers come back dark, but he’s too trashed to be horrified.

“I’m bleeding,” he says distantly, before he retches all over the coffee table.

\- - -

_“We’re gonna be late,” Steve says, poking his head around the door, a hand on his tie._

_“Fuck, I thought you’d gone already,” Tony says, whirling around under the pretense of looking for his bowtie._

_“No, we were waiting – what are you doing?” Steve says, surveying the makeup strewn all over the granite._

_Tony sneaks a look at himself in the mirror as he straightens up. He’s done a good enough job, the bruising is barely visible. And in the overdone mood lighting, after glasses and glasses of requisite champagne? No one will notice._

_Except Steve, apparently._

_“Did you get in a fight recently?” Steve says, eyeing the gauze still balled up in Tony’s hand._

_“No,” he lies, “I was testing an upgrade today, I kinda got bounced around a little, it’s fine.” He chucks his applicator in the bin and runs a hand through his hair. Piecey enough, he decides. “Ready to go?” he says, plastering a grin on his face. It hurts a little, but it’s fine, he’ll just do half-smiles tonight –_

_“Why are you putting on makeup?” Steve says._

_“Gotta look good for the paparazzi,” he says, keeping the cadence of his voice flat, devoid of inflection._

_“Is Tiberius going to be there?” Steve says pointedly, because he never lets things go, he always calls Tony on his bullshit._

_Tony fiddles with his cufflink, because he doesn’t want to have this conversation. But he looks up at Steve, finally, and Steve’s still looking at him, his eyes so perfectly blue it makes the quiet devastation all the more noticeable._

_“Tony,” Steve says sadly._

_“Yeah,” Tony says quietly, “I’m sure he will be.”_

_The look in Steve’s eyes is something Tony won’t forget for a long time._


	10. Brave New World

Tony wakes the next morning naked, blood on his sheets, and barely makes it to the toilet in time to throw up the entire contents of his stomach.

There are cool hands on his forehead, and Steve is kneeling next to him, smoothing his hair back from his forehead, rubbing his thumbs in circles on Tony’s shoulders.

His mouth tastes like bile and the salt of Steve’s come.

“You stayed,” Tony says when he’s done, because he doesn’t know what else to say. He feels awful, he’s not going to be able to sit down for a week and it’s Steve’s fault. He can’t get past the the fact that he resolutely does not want Steve’s touch right now, but his hands feel so cool on his forehead and his nausea rears up again and Tony wonders if he’s remembering the whole thing as worse than it really was.

Steve sits back on his heels and sighs. “You drink too much,” he says, as if that’s the issue at hand. “You’re dehydrated.”

“No shit,” Tony says, swiping at the flush lever.

“Why did you ask me to do that to you,” Steve says quietly.

“Why did you listen,” Tony says ruefully, not meeting Steve’s eyes.

Steve’s hand stills for a minute between Tony’s shoulder blades. “I suppose I got carried away,” he says softly.

Tony can’t tell if there’s shame there or not.

It’s no kind of excuse, but Tony doesn’t care, because he can’t stand on his own, he can’t do anything without breaking apart into remorse and shame. Steve runs his thumb over his jaw, impossibly tender, and he looks so fucking sincere Tony doesn’t even know what to think.

He’s so tired. He just wants to stop.

Tony heaves again, but nothing comes up, and he’s left trembling, slumped against the cool porcelain.

“I’m never drinking again,” he says.

“Tony,” Steve says, and pulls Tony into his arms. Tony lets him, even though he wants to flinch away, even though Steve will hurt him when he asks for it, even though this feels entirely wrong for what it is. “What’s happened to you?” he asks quietly.

What’s happened to you, Tony thinks. He presses his cheek to Steve’s shoulder and wishes he was angry.

Mostly, though, he’s just sad.

Tony rests his head on Steve’s neck, but Steve’s skin is dark, and there’s blood, crusting under his ear.

“You’re bruised,” Tony says, bringing his fingers up to touch.

“Sparring with Dugan,” Steve says.

Tony’s bruised, too.

\- - -

Steve gets shit done.

He looks at Tony with nothing to indicate they’re anything but colleagues, he dazzles and charms his way through meetings with the President and the Joint Chiefs of Staff and presents his plans for fixing what Tony never had the balls to do properly. He dresses smartly in dark classic suits and stands in front of the press with a smile that could have rivaled Tony’s, once upon a time.

“I believe in what this country can accomplish,” Steve says, and it’s disgusting, the way he’s dripping patriotism without even wearing the flag. “This is how it always should have been. Superheroes in full cooperation with the government. Accountability. We’re building a system,” he says, so fucking earnest Tony wants to vomit. “No more masks,” he says.

“What made you reverse your position, Captain Rogers?” they ask.

Steve looks at Tony when he answers. “It wasn’t worth it,” he says. “I see that now.”

Tony’s wearing sunglasses so no one can see his eyes, but he has to will himself to not flinch at the words. 

S.H.I.E.L.D.’s approval ratings skyrocket.

\- - -

They don’t talk about The Night, they don’t have any of the conversations they need to have, really.

Tony knows there’s a name for what that was.

Steve took advantage, made him bleed, but he decides not to think about it too hard, because this is a rare, good thing, him and Steve, and he can’t bear to have it fall apart under scrutiny. Maybe it was a bad decision, but it was Tony’s bad decision. Steve is not Ty. Tony trusts him. It was a lapse, that’s all. He cleaned him up, after all. Stripped off his filthy clothes sometime after Tony passed out, put him to bed. Held his hair.

Tony did ask for it.

It wasn’t so bad, really.

He apologized, after all.

Still, Tony keeps his distance. If Steve is having second thoughts, after that – Tony’s not going to push.

Tony is not having second thoughts. He’s not.

He asked for it.

\- - -

Steve spends a lot of his time liaising with the Avengers that have fled underground. Tony doesn’t tag along, of course. They don’t trust him anymore, but Steve was their leader, so Tony’s willing to cover it under the amnesty until it expires. Steve says it’s to try and bring them back, that he has high hopes, but he always returns looking haggard, wearing a look that says ask, I dare you.

He comes back with blood on his lip and a black eye, once, too. He glares and storms past Tony in the hallway like they’re strangers.

Tony wants to ask, but doesn’t.

He knows this is his fault.

\- - -

The headaches only get worse.

He sees them, when he closes his eyes. Happy in his bed, dying because of Tony, dead because of Tony. Steve, pale and gaunt behind his eyes when he closes them. He thinks he should be beyond this bit by now, if he’s got some degenerative brain disease. He knows he wouldn’t be this lucid if he was schizophrenic.

Still, there are so many ways to lose one’s shit. He always thought going insane would be faster than this.

He waits for the lights to flicker on and off, he breathes shallowly at night, alone, in his quarters, half-expecting to see someone else lurking in the corners, waiting to torment him.

Half-expecting Steve, the live one, to show up and take.

Reed hasn’t gotten back to him. He suspects he’s last on the list of priorities. Sue will have seen the news, she’ll be brimstone and vitriol the next time they meet, and Reed will do anything now not to lose her again.

Tony doesn’t understand. He’s not a doctor. It’s his code, but it’s Maya’s virus. He doesn’t have the skills to parse these new threats living in his cells. In his bones. He’s altered too much, re-written his brain, his thoughts. His memories. Omniscient. A prophet of tomorrow. The futurist made flesh.  

He never thought it would backfire like this.

He fills his brain with light and sound he knows he doesn’t need and he stays utterly silent, because if he’s losing his mind, he’s going to do it alone.

Pride goeth, isn’t that what they say?

\- - -

Steve runs things by him, uses that brilliant tactical mind of his to fix what Tony’s broken. They’re good plans. A private database locked to anyone but Steve. Centralized oversight. Efficiency. Incentives, to bring the ones who’ve left back into the fold.

It’s just like the Avengers, Steve says. It drums in Tony’s head, what he said at the tower.  _I’m doing this for you_. Tony makes a point of reminding himself this is what he wanted.

He doesn’t let himself stray to those doubts he had during the war, the what-if’s, the convincing himself this was the right course, that it was the lesser of two evils.

But he can’t listen from behind his mahogany desk, he can’t focus on the words Steve is saying, only on the angle of his jaw and the lines of his neck and the memory of his cock on Tony’s tongue. 

“Tony,” Steve says, “Are you listening?”

“No,” Tony says.

\- - -

Tony gives him back his shield, makes him new armor to replace the stuff from before. Steve says he’d rather not, that he’s exclusively S.H.I.E.L.D. now, that the suit carries too many bitter memories (rage, death, betrayal, Tony’s brain counts off), but Tony thinks his eyes gleam with something like nostalgia when he finally puts it in Steve’s hands.

Tony could just be imagining things, though. He’s good at that. 

\- - -

Steve is adamant about shutting down Hank’s program. Never mind that Tony had to lobby for three weeks to get Congress to even consider making more heroes after Stamford, never mind that their ranks are already scraped thin because they’ve lost half of their people.

The first time they argue about it, Tony calls Steve a hypocrite.

He knows why he does it. Steve barely looks at him when they’re at work. He’s cordial enough in front of the crew, not so much as a glance to indicate they’re anything more than uneasy allies. He sleeps in his own quarters at night and Tony lies awake between his own cold sheets.

Tony knows better. He’s had Steve’s dick in his mouth.

He wants a reaction. There are so few things he’s certain of, and he can’t bear not knowing where they stand any longer.  

He gets what he’s looking for.

Steve slams his coffee cup down and pins Tony to the wall. Tony trips on his shock for a minute, and then Steve is climbing him like a tree, clamping his mouth over Tony’s, and Tony strangles his protestations and moans like he’s being paid to do it.

This is what they’re doing now, he thinks vaguely, as Steve paws at his clothes. Silence, until they can’t be silent any longer.

Tony should push him away, but Steve is stronger, and it’s not worth the effort it would take, really. It’s not so strange. They all deal with stress differently, and Tony knows him, knows how he gets when he’s pushed to his limits (and Tony’s good at that). Steve doesn’t sulk, doesn’t lick his wounds alone in the dark like Tony does, he pretends they don’t exist, he keeps living up to impossible standards until he snaps and this happens.

Tony lets him black out the windows in the ready room and peel him half out of his suit. He lets Steve wrap a hand around his throat, lets him fuck him long and deep with a hand over his mouth to muffle the noises he can’t stop making. Tony closes his eyes and takes it, like they haven’t been ignoring each other for the past week, like the last time they did this wasn’t all kinds of wrong, like it’s perfectly normal to fuck instead of fight.

Tony tells himself he wants it, that it’s the best way for both of them to get rid of their aggression. Steve seems like he needs it, Tony can see how frenzied his eyes look as he pants, as he drags his teeth over Tony’s nipples and sucks marks into his chest and sinks into his body before he’s entirely stretched.

He gets it, he gets that Steve is angry, even when he pretends he’s not, that he’s pushing everything he had, away, too. Tony should have to crawl on his knees through the desert and beg for forgiveness.

This can be how he crawls, he thinks. He can be the best fucking thing Steve’s ever tasted.

Steve deserves that, at least.

\- - -

Tony wonders if they’re in a relationship now. He doesn’t remember what it feels like, since Rumiko. Maya didn’t count. He thinks there used to be skiing. Dinner in fancy chalets. Snow. Christmas shopping.

Happiness, though – it’s dimmer all the time, the good all tangled up in the pain that followed.  

He thinks maybe it was something like this. If it wasn’t, he can’t recall.

He lets it happen again, against all of his better instincts.

“Tony,” Steve grunts out, mouthing at Tony’s earlobe over his shoulder.

“More,” Tony gets out, reaching an arm behind him to draw Steve’s head down close to his ear.

“Fuck, Tony,” Steve whispers, his cheek damp with sweat, flush with Tony’s. “Fuck, I love you,” he says, right before he shudders and stills and Tony feels himself filling up, feels it dripping down his legs, and then Tony’s coming too, all over the sheets, Steve’s hand wrapped tight around him.

Tony decides this is close enough to happiness.

\- - -

It happens like that, Steve pretending to be a stranger one minute and fucking him into the wall (the bed, the desk) the next, dizzy and desperate, whispering filthy things in his ear. In Steve’s Spartan quarters. In Tony’s. In Sal’s lab, once, Tony’s protests falling on deaf ears the whole time. On the conference table, with his ankles on Steve’s shoulders.

Tony comes away with bruises on his hips, marks on his throat just below his collar, a hitch in his step.

Steve never bottoms, always, it’s Tony who gets pushed and pulled and reamed until he can’t comfortably sit down. Tony asks, once, and Steve just laughs. “Not sure you could fill me up, Shellhead,” he says fondly, and Tony pretends not to wilt.  _Whatever you want_ , he thinks. Extremis will fix it. It’s fine.

Tony wonders if Steve was like this with Sharon. With Rachel. He’d always seemed so gentle, before, even at his angriest. He used to keep it from spilling over onto everyone else. He would walk away, and if he couldn’t, they’d spar until they could laugh again.

But it was there, now that he thinks about it, even if it was expertly concealed. Steve has no egress in combat now (Tony’s taken that from him too), it makes sense he likes it rough. Tony does too. He does.

Still. Sometimes he wonders why everything is so much different than he’d imagined it.

His gut twists every time he hears Steve walking up behind him. He waits for the hand he knows is going to settle itself between his legs, around his throat, for Steve’s mouth hot against his ear.

He waits for Steve to say I love you again, but he doesn’t.

Tony wonders what he’s doing wrong.

\- - -

Steve seems happy enough. He works twice the hours Tony does, he makes strides Tony hasn’t been able to make on his own. He’s good with people. Charming. A diplomat. He lets the teams in every state have relative autonomy, but he makes a point of meeting with them every few days, to coordinate. To touch base.

It’s supposed to free Tony up to do things work on S.H.I.E.L.D.’s five-year strategic plan and conference with Interpol on the latest domestic mischief. He’s supposed to be tackling a bunch of home-growns in Idaho and a splinter A.I.M. cell in Detroit. Things, real S.H.I.E.L.D. things, have been piling up while he’s been dragging his feet and wishing Steve was alive.

Now that he is, Tony has to do his fucking job, and all he wants to do is quit.

He needs to get off the damn boat.

\- - -

“I’m taking my vacation time,” Tony says.

Maria tears herself away from the monitor she’s reviewing. “Now?” she says. “What about the Initiative? You have meetings with the Pentagon all through next week. The amnesty is about to -”

“You and Steve seem to be handling things fine,” he says.

She straightens up. “I wanted to talk to you about him.”

“If you have a problem with my hiring policies, go whine to Kooning,” he snaps.

“I was going to say I approved,” she says.

“Oh,” he says, because he’s a jerk.

“But if you’d rather I chew you out –“

“No,” Tony says, “I wouldn’t.”

“You two always should have been working together on this,” she says, handing him a briefing packet. She actually smiles.

It should be nice, having her approval. He’s doing the right thing, now, and people are noticing.

Except it feels like no matter what he does, it’s not enough, like his best instincts don’t mean shit. Steve doesn’t care about the credit he’s getting, Tony’s name is still garbage. What he had doesn’t get rebuilt in a year. Decades, maybe, and he’ll have weathered this. 

He feels like maybe he should have never walked out of that cave alive. 

\- - -

He hates the tower.

It’s almost empty, a shell of a home. Carol doesn’t base her team out of it anymore, Tony discovers. It’s possible she didn’t want to hurt his feelings, but he knows. Too many ghosts wandering the halls. It was never going to be the same, no matter how many times he lied to them and told them it would be, being government-sanctioned.

A team by imperative.

Heroes don’t have government paychecks.

He takes a day to clean Maya’s stuff out of his suite, because she’s left a fuck-ton of clothes. He guesses she couldn’t be bothered to come back before she left to start her new life as a bioterrorist. He thinks maybe he shouldn’t donate them to the shelter, maybe someday she’ll come back, but it’s stupid. In the end he shoves them in a storage container and buries them in the sub-basement.

Jarvis bustles around and makes him soup, and he thinks he should be pleased at being looked after again, but mostly he feels hollow and sick.

He was planning to get things done. Run some diagnostics on the armor, try and fix his brain so it doesn’t show him ghosts anymore, upgrade the Helicarrier’s security systems after that EMP scare. Give the board at SE something to get them off his back for the next few fiscal quarters.

Distract himself from the world he knows is plodding on without him.

Mostly, though, he ends up staring out the window and wishing he knew how to get back whatever it is they’ve lost.

\- - -

Steve comes to visit him late one afternoon, and Tony wishes he’d go away.

“You’ve been avoiding me,” Steve says, sliding into bed with him, pressing up against his back, already sliding a hand between Tony’s legs. He smells like wintergreen, in his bare skin, his hair damp and cool on the pillow. Tony wonders how long he’s been in the tower. Jarvis didn’t alert him.

It should be funny, how Steve assumes he wants sex, all the time, how years of fucking everything that moved have backfired like this.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were running,” he whispers in Tony’s ear, hitching one of his legs up so he can fondle him through his boxers.

“Stop,” he says. “I’m not in the mood.” He rolls back over, because he’s weary, and his bed is warm and his body aches and all he wants is to sink into the down and never wake up.

“Are you sure?” Steve whispers, running a hand over Tony’s hip, slipping two fingers under the waistband of his boxers. “Because it feels like you are.”

That’s his cue, he thinks. To moan, to grind into Steve’s hand. Play the part, Tony.

Steve grips his jaw and turns his head back so he can nip at Tony’s mouth.

“Nn,” Tony breathes, hardening under Steve’s touch, dreading the part that’s coming next. “Can we just – frot, or something, I’m exhausted –“

“Shh,” Steve says. “Relax, I’ll be gentle.”

“Has your libido always been this ridiculous,” Tony says.

Steve smiles, and kisses him, deep and filthy, just hard enough for Tony’s lips to bruise.

“No,” he says, already seizing Tony’s knees, “It’s just you.”

\- - -

Tony is falling asleep when his brain lights up with data.

**Perimeter breached** , the tower’s security systems wail.  **Unauthorized Starktech Detected**. His proximity alerts are screeching in his frontal lobe.

He sits up, dread in his stomach, scanning and arming his skin and already scrambling out of bed. There’s something big out there, judging by the preliminary holographic projections, several somethings, airborne and huge and heading their way. He’s raising the darkening on the windows and bringing the Tower defense systems online when he makes the mistake of looking up.

They’re eerie, and massive, ambling through the sky, backlit by the pale light of the waning moon. They’re utterly silent, which is creepy as fuck, and Tony feels himself put a hand to the window, as if he can touch them, as if he can beat them back himself by sheer force of will.

It’s a fleet, at least 20 of them, Mark VII Sentinels coasting over the skyline.

No, he thinks.

He turns around, because this could be another hallucination, he’d never know, he could be dreaming.

Steve is lounging there on the bed, completely naked, looking confused and disquietingly unalarmed.

“Steve,” he says slowly. “Are you seeing this?”

He turns back around to look, because he can’t not. It’s a beautiful and terrible thing, seeing his creations loosed on the world like this. But this – this is what was in all the dossiers, this is what he’s had nightmares about. This is why he did what he did, this is why Steve died –

Tony is on the verge of a well-concealed panic attack when he feels Steve behind him.

“Mm,” Steve says, pressing him into the glass, his hands on Tony’s hips. “The amnesty expired today.”

That takes a minute to sink in.

“What?” Tony says, terribly quiet.

“Yeah,” Steve says quietly. “No one took us up on it, except a few of the young ones.”

He’s not dreaming.

“No one,” Tony echoes faintly, transfixed by this new, horribly bit of reality. Those are his designs, the new ones, the ones the government wanted him to make for “defensive purposes” after he stopped building them shit like this.

Steve sighs, and rests his head on Tony’s shoulder. “They know we’re sleeping together,” he says. “Your little stunt crashing our meeting made it obvious.”

“Because Logan can fucking smell me on you?” Tony says weakly, his eyes glued to the Sentinel that’s wandering up Park Avenue.

“Apparently it doesn’t take much,” Steve says. “He punched me in the face last time I met with them. They think I’ve sold out.”

Tony swallows, because that’s just a little too much in line with his own concerns.

“Is that what you think?” he says.

He’s more startled every day at the things Steve does, at how much he’s apparently willing to throw away, for Tony. He shouldn’t be, the only thing to do is ride the current, they can’t turn back time – but still, the alacrity with which Steve’s thrown himself at this problem -

Steve tenses behind him. “No,” he says, but his voice is low and dark and Tony knows it’s a lie.  

“I’d do a lot for you,” Steve murmurs. 

He wishes Steve would just be Steve and tell him this isn’t ok.

Tony’s beginning to realize he can’t protect him from anything he thought he could.

A Sentinel drifts past them, a few stories lower.

“Steve,” he says, “They were supposed to go for it, you said they would go for it, it was supposed to work so we didn’t have to do anything like this-”

“Tony,” Steve murmurs in his ear, pressing his enormous body into Tony’s, pinning them both to the window as the massive things drift by, sinister and silver in the scant moonlight. “You’re on vacation,” he says, working his hand down Tony’s stomach, running over the paper-thin gold tapped into Tony’s nerves. “I didn’t want you worrying about this,” Steve says.

“You didn’t want me to - Steve, those are fucking Sentinels. I - how did no one take us up on this, they’re supposed to trust us again, because you’re you -”

“Well, I’m not pleased about it either, but they don’t,” Steve says. “We have to adapt, we talked about this –“

“No we didn’t,” Tony says, on the verge of hysteria, “I can’t believe you’re using Sentinels, Steve, this is so many kinds of not ok, we’re hunting them like fucking animals –“

“This was your idea,” Steve says, “What are you talking about –“

“It was not, Steve, you never ran any of this by me –“

“You designed them,” Steve says, gripping his shoulder, spinning him around. “Tony, we were down in the lab three days ago and you were modifying them for superhumans instead of mutants. You showed me the plans.”

“What?” Tony says, and his own voice sounds terribly small.

Steve looks at him like he’s insane.

Tony forces himself to breathe and frantically flips through the security footage for the past few days, because he doesn’t remember. He wonders if they were even on, because there’s so much and he’s not finding what he needs. He’s been making a point of turning them off lately whenever Steve walks into a room because it always ends with Tony bent over the nearest flat surface.

It’s happening again, he’s missing things, again, really fucking important things.

He doesn’t remember. Another symptom, he thinks.

Tony swallows and stares into Steve’s eyes as if there’s some answer to be found there.

“Do you really not remember?” Steve says, cradling Tony’s jaw in his hand, looking terribly concerned.

“No,” Tony all but whispers. “I don’t.”

“I’m worried about you,” Steve says, drawing Tony into his chest, pressing his lips against Tony’s neck in a sloppy kiss, fisting his fingers in Tony’s hair.  “You’ve been so distracted lately, I don’t know how to get a handle on you, Tony –“

He tries to relax, tries to listen to what Steve is saying, tries to tear his gaze away from the fucking Sentinels coasting down the empty streets. But he feels cold, a nameless dread shifting low in his belly.

His heart is speeding up. Steve is thumbing his nipple. His neurons are firing in a hysterical feedback loop.

_You’re damaged_ , they say. 


	11. Walk The Line

Maria is calling him.

It’s too early. Tony is sore and stiff and has no inclination to force himself into the waking world.

“It’s 4 in the morning,” he responds wordlessly. Steve is passed out on top of him, Tony doubts he could move if he wanted to.

“We just found James Barnes’ body,” she says.

Tony can feel his blood slowing.

“What,” he says, closing his eyes to this new unexpected horror.

“Get here,” she says. “You should probably bring Rogers. Hill out.”

This is your job, he thinks, and nausea roils in his skull. Bring out your dead.

“Steve,” he murmurs, “you have to wake up.”

\- - -

_“I’m sorry,” Tony says when Sam’s left. “I wish I could go with you, I really do, but – ugh, Steve, this is such a mess, I haven’t been in shit this deep since Obadiah -“_

_“Tony, it’s ok,” Steve says._

_Tony tears his head away from where it’s resting in his hands._

_“I know what he meant to you,” Tony says. “I can’t imagine how you must be feeling right now.”_

_Steve looks resolutely out the window, and doesn’t look at Tony. There’s weariness written in his stance, the way his shoulders are slumping, the way his hands hang limply at his sides._

_“I don’t know who he is now,” Steve says. “I don’t know anything. He – they say he’s been brainwashed. An assassin. That’s what they’d call me if I’d been born ten years later than I was, if they’d made me during the Cold War instead.”_

_“Steve,” Tony says._

_“It’s cruel,” Steve says, “He’s alive. It’s what I always wanted. But it’s not – he might as well be dead.” His voice breaks, ever so slightly. He shuts his eyes tightly and leans his head against the molding around the glass._

_“You never know,” Tony says softly. “You know how this shit works, Steve, he could be there, underneath, the source material could be –“_

_“He could hate me,” Steve says. “Even if he’s in there, he could hate me.”_

_“I’ll do whatever you need,” Tony says. “Anything. Say the word.”_

_Steve turns slowly, terribly deliberately, and Tony knows this is a thing people don’t ever see, Steve falling apart, dark and vulnerable. Steve lets him look, lets him see how his eyes are glazed and red and haunted, how there’s blond stubble on his chin._

_He looks like he wants to say something. He’s lost, his eyes are miles away, but he flexes his jaw and Tony knows he’s biting back tears. He moves his hand, an aborted little wave in Tony’s direction before he drops it back down._

_Like he wants the touch._

_Like he wants Tony to give it to him._

_But then the moment is gone, and it moves over Steve’s features in a wave, the steel, the resolve, the barriers put back up._

_“Yeah,” Steve says, terribly sad, “I’ll let you know.”_

\- - -

Bucky died in costume.

He has energy burns across his chest, and one side of his face is completely black, charred and burnt, like human flesh should never be. There’s blood, so much blood, seeped into the star on his chest, smearing on the metal gurney he’s lying on. Bullets he couldn’t dodge, nestled between the ridges on his arm.

It was Steve, lying there, not too long ago.  

“You gave him the shield?” Maria splutters. Dugan shifts uncomfortably in the corner.

“Let it go,” Tony says, willing this problem to go away. The headache is already coming, he can feel it filling out his temples, billowing behind his eyes. “Tell me how this happened.”

“You fucked up,” Steve says, speaking for the first time since they’ve landed. He’s speaking into his palms, holed up in the corner in a folding chair, his head in his hands.

Tony isn’t sure if he means S.H.I.E.L.D. or him.

He’s not sure there’s a difference, now.

Maria must sense danger, because she jumps in with a circumspect glance at both of them. “We think it was an anomaly. One of them shouldn’t have gotten past inspection, the coding was off, it killed him instead of apprehending-“

“I see that,” Tony snaps. “Can you offer me anything useful?”

Maria falls silent.

“Autopsy,” Tony says wearily, after a minute, almost sorry. “This can’t happen again.”

He hasn’t forgotten (though he’d like to wipe that whole night from his memory) how he waited, how Bucky never showed.

Hindsight is always 20/20.  

“I’m going back home,” Tony says, but the word is foreign on his tongue.

“Should we shut the rest down?” Maria asks of him, because apparently this was Tony’s idea.

“No,” he says to the floor, because he doesn’t know what difference it even makes. “I’ll fix it.”

At that, Steve walks out of the room without looking at him.

\- - -

Tony forces himself to go over Bucky’s autopsy report.

He reads about Bucky’s body and how the Sentinel killed him and catalogs each and every horrible injury. He lets it wash over him, he lets himself feel each and every stab of guilt, and when the not-inconsiderable dossier comes to an end, he reads Sharon’s autopsy reports.

He learns about how she’d been severely dehydrated and how the bones in her feet were broken from blunt trauma. He learns about how they kept her drugged out of her mind, how they tried to use her blood to pull Steve back through the timestream.

He learns about the innumerable wrongs he’s let happen, about the pain he’s done to Steve.

When he’s done, he sits in the kitchen and downs several fingers of Scotch before he commits himself to fixing the code he doesn’t remember writing.

He rides the elevator all the way down where he’s had them bring the offending unit. It stares up at him, which is unnerving, so he takes the head apart first, he goes over every fucking inch of it, but there’s nothing mechanically wrong that he can see. Still, there are 30 more of them, so he leaves it in pieces on the workbench. He doesn’t need another Ultron. 

He goes over each and every one of the remaining machines. He makes sure the parameters are clearly defined, very distinctly delineates between ‘terminate’ and ‘apprehend’ and then he closes his eyes in horror for a moment and goes about updating the search criteria.

He’s going to do it right.

He modifies the parameters to detect biochemical energy. He trains them to ferret out extraordinary agility. Artificially generated magnetic fields. Modified arachnid DNA. He spends 2 hours writing in every characteristic of every person he’s ever worked with that’s gone underground.

_Traitor_ , his brain hisses.

\- - -

Steve sits across from him at the kitchen table, a thousand different kinds of betrayal in his eyes, and it strikes Tony, how he can’t even be comfortable in the most casual of spaces anymore. Even with the remnants of a half-eaten dinner strewn between them, even with Jarvis bustling about somewhere on the floor, even when he’s in sweats and a ratty t-shirt, the air itself is caustic.

He doesn’t belong anywhere.

“This is your fault,” Steve is saying, but Tony is only half-listening. He’s already moved ahead through the rage and the anger and the violence he’s sure is going to happen and onto the silence, the awful looks Steve will give him he knows he deserves but doesn’t want to endure.

Tony stares and stares, because there is nothing he can say or do to write himself out of this latest error.

“Yes,” Tony says to his coffee. Even if he doesn’t remember, even if he didn’t want this. Intent is nothing and consequence is everything, he’s coming to realize. The road to hell.

He’s learning every mile.

“He’s dead,” Steve says, all quiet, focused anger. “Him and Sharon, now, you seem to have a talent for getting everyone that’s every mattered to me killed.”

Tony doesn’t say anything.

“Are you even listening to me?” Steve says, kicking his calf under the table.

Tony looks up and can’t make an expression appear on his face.

“I’m sorry,” he says stupidly.

“No, you aren’t,” Steve says, throwing down the paper he’s carried in with him (CAP 2.0 SLAUGHTERED BY ROGUE SENTINEL, the headline boasts), standing to leave.  

Tony’s brain kicks into higher gear, then, and he’s standing, too, reaching for Steve’s arm and begging.

“No, I am, I’m sorry, Steve, there’s – I’m sorry, I’m sorry, and I know that nothing I can say will help, but please, just – ”

“No, it won’t,” Steve snaps, shaking Tony’s hand off his arm. “You had to do this _one thing_ , Tony.”

I know, I know, I know.

He doesn’t say it could have been worse, he doesn’t say I tried, he doesn’t say please forgive me.

“You told me this would be a non-lethal solution, Tony. Your words, not mine.”

_I don’t fucking remember,_  Tony can’t say.

“I’ll shut them down,” Tony says, “I will shut them down, we never should have done this, it’s –“

“It’s not about the Sentinels, Tony, it’s about you, being sloppy. You aren’t like other people. When you screw up, people die. Bucky is dead, Tony, because you couldn’t get your goddamn code right,” he snarls.

_Steve is dead because of you. Because of you, Tony._

Because of Tony. 

Tony closes his eyes. “It’s been hard,” he says, “it’s been really hard while you were gone, Steve. ”

“Yes, I’ve heard,” Steve says. “I’ve heard how lost you were without me. I’ve heard how terrible everything was when you finally got your way.” Steve steps closer to Tony, and there it is again, the undeniable urge he has to scamper, to hide himself away in the sub-basement until this blows over.

“And to be honest? I’m really sick of the excuses,” Steve whispers viciously. “I’m not gone anymore, and you’re still doing a piss-poor job where it matters.” He huffs out a hollow little laugh. “The Tony Stark I used to know got things done right the first time.”

Everything sounds infinitely truer when it comes out of Steve’s mouth.

“Steve,” Tony says, and he’s pleading a little, because this is awful, this is more awful than he was prepared to deal with when he woke up this morning, and his head hurts and there’s no more room in him for this kind of disaster any more. “I get it, ok, you’re angry, justifiably so, ok, but I don’t know what –“

“No, see,” Steve says, looming a foot above him now, his eyes edged with feral rage, “You don’t get to tell me how I’m feeling,” he hisses.

“What can I do?” Tony says. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, tell me what I can do.”

Steve turns away. “Don’t ask me that.”

“I am trying,” Tony says, “I hate this, I fucking hate it, I don’t know how to be better –“

“You don’t get it, do you,” Steve says, all spit and disgust now. “This isn’t about you. You don’t get to be a martyr for this. Poor Tony, so much on his plate, so much responsibility, too much stress, no support, does  _anything_  actually matter to you?”

“Can you please not yell at me,” Tony says, feeling very small.

“Can I – fine, you’re right, it would just be a waste of energy,” Steve spits.

“Steve,” Tony says again, “I’m doing the best I can –“

Steve punches him in the jaw.

Tony finds himself crumpling to the floor, because it’s easier than taking a stand at this particular moment.

“Your best isn’t going to bring him back,” Steve hisses as he turns away.  

He thinks he should stand up and hit Steve back, but then Steve is leaving, and Tony doesn’t have the energy to do anything but watch him go.

Tony sits, slumped against the wall, until he can’t hear Steve’s footfalls anymore, and then he sits some more.

\- - -

He crawls into bed, later, when Tony is curled into a ball under the duvet. Then his fingers are on Tony’s face, exploring, irritating the bruise that’s blossoming on his jaw, running over his lips with the pads of his thumbs.

“I’m sorry,” Steve whispers into his hair, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have hit you, you just make me so mad, Tony, you don’t know what you do to me.”

Tony thinks he has some idea.

He doesn’t want to be angry anymore, he doesn’t want Steve to be angry with him. Really, he’d like to be held and kept and loved in Steve’s strong arms, but that’s probably not in the cards tonight, so he does the next best thing. He picks himself up and curls into Steve’s side, rubs himself on Steve’s skin and does his best to shut off his higher brain functions.

That’s all it takes, and Steve is rolling him over and forcing his boxers down over his hips.

Tony doesn’t need to say anything. That’s what sex is for.

\- - -

This isn’t like the other times.

There is nothing but devotion in Steve’s half-lidded eyes as he cradles Tony in his arms and rocks into him, rocks them together as though they were never two different people.

He’s everywhere, writing this new history onto Tony’s skin with every press of his lips, and Tony clings to him with slick fingertips that can never feel enough. Steve is pressing his lips to Tony’s temples, the place where his eyelashes fall when his eyes are closed, the corners of his mouth fallen open as he pants for more, for more of Steve, for this to never end –

“Tony,” Steve is saying, his arms trembling, his neck tucked desperately into Tony’s, and he moves and Tony lets out a shattered sob. 

He’s happy, there’s nothing in him but joy and desperate, aching need for his lover and he can’t remember the last time he’s felt like this (if he’s ever felt like this) -

He lets himself cry out, because it feels good to do it, because he is utterly in love with this man and this is everything they’ll ever need, this is how it always should have been, Tony-and-Steve, writhing on this bed, breathing each other’s air as if it were their own -

“Fuck,” Steve manages, wrecked and desperate, because he is the other half of Tony’s whole –

_Yes_ , Tony is saying,  _I love you I love you Steve yes more Steve yes,_ and then there’s only blinding sensation and ecstasy and the blood rushing in his ears and Steve’s face next to his, whispering the only truth Tony has ever needed to hear -

Tony opens his eyes to his dark and silent bedroom and he’s trembling.

He reaches a hand up to his throat where Steve’s lips were, seconds before, but there are only hours-old bruises that ache when he presses.

He rocks with his knees pulled up to his chest and bites back sobs he should be screaming out.

\- - -

It occurs to him, over breakfast the next morning.

“I don’t want to do this anymore,” Tony says, staring very intently at his half-eaten cherry turnover. He shifts on his chair until he finds a relatively comfortable position.

“What,” Steve says absently, not even bothering to look up.

“S.H.I.E.L.D.” Tony says. “This title. I want my soul back.”

Steve folds his paper with a sigh and levels his gaze at Tony. “Tony,” he says.

“No, don’t. I can’t do it,” Tony says, finally working up the guts to look Steve in the eye. “I’m going to give my notice.”

“That’s not an option,” Steve says. “You can’t quit.”

“Why the fuck not,” Tony says sharply. “Other people can quit.”

“Who do you think they’d get to replace you?” Steve says, entirely reasonably.

Tony has had enough of reason.

“I don’t even care,” he says. “Do you know why I took the job? Because I was obligated. Because whoever else they would have put in would have.” He bites at his lip. “You died and there was no one, Steve. It didn’t mean anything, it was so _senseless_.”

He’s startled at the vehemence of his own words, but it’s something he hasn’t allowed himself to say out loud since he took the job. It was Maria’s suggestion, yes. Piss off the right people, she’d said. It felt good. It was supposed to be a giant fuck you, an  _as long as I’m around there’ll still be heroes._

It’s something else entirely, now.

Steve is very still. “You have a responsibility,” he says. “Not just to me, Tony. To all of them. Out there.”

Tony snorts. “We’re sending sentinels after them, Steve, I think they’re beyond giving a shit about what we do here–“

“Stop. Listen to yourself,” Steve says, and he’s abandoned his eggs now. “When will you learn that you don’t exist in a vacuum? You took this job so this would stay in-house. They made their choice,” he says. “You need to make sure they –“

“I’m no good to anyone if I’m getting people killed. The collateral damage is getting unmanageable.”

Steve sighs heavily. “We knew there was going to be damage,” he says. “It’s better –“

“I don’t want to make these decisions anymore, Steve! I don’t want to have to choose between incarcerating our friends and killing them! How soon before it’s Sam on that table because I fuck up again? How soon ‘til it’s Peter?”

Steve closes his eyes. Biting back his anger on Tony’s account again, no doubt.

“I need to take myself out of the equation,” Tony says, letting his fork clatter to his plate.

“That’s not going to fix, this, Tony –“

“Then tell me what will!” he shouts, his voice echoing off the vaulted ceiling. “Tell me what to do, Steve!” He claws at his own hair. “I can’t do this, I can’t take the fucking stress, Steve, I’m hallucinating, ok, I’m not sleeping, I was never a good politician, I was never a soldier, I _fucked up_!”

His words ring in the spacious kitchen and Steve sits very still. “You’re not cut out for this,” he says, as if he’s realizing it for the first time.

“No,” Tony mutters, looking out the window, “I’m really not.”

“I can help you with that,” Steve says.

“They’re not going to make you director,” Tony says, “They were ready to hang you a few months ago-“

“That’s not what I meant,” Steve says, standing up. Stalking around the table. Insinuating himself in Tony’s space.

Tony sits very still as Steve’s hands run themselves down Tony’s chest, back up under his shirt. One of them wraps around his neck, and then his head is being forced up, and Steve is looking down at him with a predator’s smile.

He leans over the back of Tony’s chair, over his shoulder. “You have a control problem,” he croons.

“I wouldn’t if I quit,” Tony says miserably.

“You can’t quit,” Steve says. “Not until we can find someone to replace you.” He runs his hands through Tony’s hair.

It should be soothing, but Tony can’t concentrate when Steve’s hands are all over him. Which is always, these days.

“I’m going to help you,” Steve says, massaging Tony’s shoulders now. “I think we need to find Fury.”

“Don’t you think I’ve tried to find him?” Tony says wearily.

“No,” Steve says. “Not really. You’ve been doing everything but your job. Signing things. Meetings. Arresting people. Playing around with the Alphas.” He kisses Tony’s forehead and wraps his arms around Tony’s neck. “You haven’t had time to do real intelligence.”

Tony sighs, because Steve is right. “He’s off the map, Steve. I don’t even know if he’s in the country. I don’t know if he’s planning to come back - what are you doing?”

Steve is pulling him out of his chair, smooth and deadly and efficient as all his movements are, holding him around the waist, fisting his fingers in Tony’s t-shirt.

“I told you,” Steve says, holding him very firmly with his other arm around his shoulders. “You have a control problem.”

Tony swallows. “Yes,” he says.

“You just can’t let go, can you,” Steve says, moving the hand around Tony’s waist to grab at his ass. “You can’t relax,” he purrs.

“Steve,” Tony says, because they just had sex half an hour ago.

“Tony,” he mimics darkly. “Let me take care of you,” he says.

“I do,” Tony says. “I do let you take care of me.”

“No,” Steve says, running a thumb over Tony’s bruised lips. “You need to stop thinking, for a change.”

“I can’t,” Tony says. “I'm wired in.”

“Turn off the feeds,” Steve says, low in his voice, the unyielding edge of command creeping in.

Tony hasn’t heard that in a while.

“I can’t,” he says again, “they never really go away unless I turn off the network, and I can’t-“

“Tony,” Steve says, dragging him unexpectedly closer with a sudden flex of his arms. “Don’t lie to me. You have ways. Turn. Them off.”

Steve’s eyes are edged with fierce determination, all of their intensity focused on Tony’s face. It’s terrifying and smothering and Tony can’t help but think that he must need this if Steve is so insistent.

Tony uses a filter he hasn’t used since Steve died and blocks every one of the 3 billion receptors in his body to go off-network. He feels them going offline, one by one, and it shudders through him like a full-body cramp for a moment before there’s silence.

It’s terrifying.

“Ok,” he says, feeling entirely not ok.

“Good,” Steve says, his mouth twitching upwards in a smile. He leans in for a kiss, and Tony opens his mouth automatically, lets Steve take what he wants, even though his lips are chapped and bruised and it feels like a chore.

Steve pulls back and cups Tony’s head in one of his massive hands. “We’re going to find Fury,” he half-murmurs, as if it’s as filthy a secret as anything he’s about to whisper in Tony’s ear. “You’re going to find him, and bring him back, and you’re going to walk away from this government business.”

“Ok,” Tony says, knowing he’ll agree to anything Steve posits now, because Steve has better ideas than he does. Steve has a working memory. Steve doesn’t hallucinate.

Steve is always right. 

“Come with me,” Steve says, pulling them back to Tony’s bedroom.

Tony goes.

\- - -

“I’ve done research,” Steve says after Tony closes the door.

There’s a coil of silk rope on the bed that’s somehow appeared in the time it’s taken Tony to make coffee and pretend he gets any pleasure from eating breakfast anymore.

“Have you now,” Tony says, unease and intrigue warring in his voice. “Really, this is your solution?”

“You said you wanted my help,” he says.

Tony swallows. “Yeah, I didn't think you meant this,” he says.

“I know you like it,” Steve says, cupping Tony in one of his huge hands, and Tony’s dismayed to realize he’s already half-mast. “You have a drawer in your nightstand filled with restraints, Tony,” he whispers, dragging his teeth over Tony’s earlobe, and Tony’s breath catches in his throat.  

Steve is hard already.

“Jesus, Steve,” Tony says, and Steve slides his hand up a little. “I don’t really,” he says.  _I haven’t used those since Rumiko_ , he doesn’t say. 

Sometimes Tony thinks that maybe Steve came back wrong. 

Because Tony has a closet full of toys, there are videos of Tony on the internet doing ridiculous things (when he was stupid and reckless about it), there was a time Tony did shit like this every night. Tony likes sex, he does. Except it’s Steve. He isn’t sure he’s ready to show Steve this part of himself. He’s not sure Steve is ready to see him. 

"Have you," Tony says, and his voice gives out, he chokes. "Have you - wanted this?" Because they're admittedly not the best at communicating, but this is more than out of left-field for Steve, it's - odd, it's - unexpected -

It's not odd at all, Tony realizes, and maybe that explains some of what he's been doing recently, why it's never gentle and always slightly impersonal, why he always ends up with Steve's hands around his wrists. 

Steve wants to tie him up. Steve maybe wants to hurt him. Recreationally. 

It’s Steve, though, he thinks. Steve.

Steve.

It’s fine.

Steve runs a finger over Tony’s lips.

“Do you not trust me?” Steve says, as if he’s been reading Tony’s mind.

“Of course I trust you,“ Tony says as evenly as he can manage.

“Then prove it.”

This is all kinds of darkness. All kinds of dangerous. 

It takes everything Tony has not to bolt for the door and call the armor and run.

“Ok,” Tony says, entirely unconvinced, and lets himself be led. Steve is already pulling Tony further into the room, dragging him off balance, handling him like he’s a ragdoll.

He smiles and locks the door.

“Why don’t you kneel,” Steve says, and Tony feels himself kneel. 


	12. Rats in the Walls

It doesn’t feel like a scene.

Steve doesn’t say anything beyond issuing simple commands. Strip, Tony, kneel, Tony, spread your knees and bow your head, Tony.

Tony does it. He does it all, and it would feel good if he could turn off his fucking brain. He should know better. 

He suspects that’s why Steve chose the rope. That’s the point, after all. Ropes aren’t quick like cuffs are, Tony has to sit still while he’s trussed. He has to keep his mouth shut and let Steve have him. It’s Steve’s quiet brand of justice, letting him sit and think and stew.

Let. 

Steve is so certain in his movements, in the way he methodically winds the rope between Tony’s thighs and back again, over the planes of his body, around his waist. Thumbs the ends around into perfectly tight knots. Caresses each bit of Tony before he lays the silk down over his skin.

“I’d like to negotiate,” Tony says carefully, keeping his gaze straight ahead.

“Mm,” Steve says, thumbing a leather gag, “I’ll bet you would.” He kneels in front of Tony and thumbs his chin so it’s tilted up in something like supplication. “Well,” he says. “I’m listening.”

“Have you done this before?” Tony says.

Steve’s face warps into a deeply amused smirk. “Do you honestly think I’d risk your safety with something I’d never done,” he says, pressing his thumb just inside the slick of Tony’s mouth. “Rachel liked it.”

“You said you’d done research –“

Steve laughs soft in his throat.  “Research on you. I know what you like.” ‘

“How,” Tony says, disquiet slithering in his belly. “How, Steve, how would you know that-"

“You’re not the only one that can find what you need,” Steve says, leaning closer. “I watched your security footage. I’ve read your file, Tony. I’ve seen all the filthy things you let her do to you.”

There is a chill settling into Tony’s bones, and he’d like nothing more than to buck and snarl and slap a black eye across Steve’s pretty face. “You watched me,” he says, desperately trying to keep his voice steady, “you watched Rumiko and me, having sex-”

“It’s in SHIELD’s servers,” Steve says, testing the knots on Tony’s arms.

“Untie me,” Tony says, entirely done with this bullshit. “You’re a dick, Steve, that was fucking private-”

Steve grabs at the ropes somewhere between his back and his tightly bound arms and pushes him face-first into the rug. Tony feels a knee press into his back between his shoulder blades.

There’s nothing Tony can do.

“I don’t think you understand,” Steve says, somewhere above him. “You need this. I know you, Tony, I know it all gets to be too much.” Steve’s shirt falls onto the ground next to Tony’s head. “I know you better than anyone,” he says, and his voice is measurably softer, “I don’t like seeing you unhappy.”

Steve’s fingers are tangling in his hair, and Tony can’t fucking stand it.

“You need to let me do this for you,” Steve presses, so calm.

“Steve,” Tony says, wriggling a little, trying to shake off his hand, “I don’t want to do this while I’m mad at you.”

Steve laughs soft and low in his chest. He pulls up on Tony’s arms, strains his shoulders and presses his chest into the ground even harder with his knee. 

“You won’t be soon,” Steve says reasonably. “You’ll be so far gone you won't be able to speak.” Steve’s voice is so composed, so assured, so balanced and measured in a way it hasn’t been lately, in a way that Tony thought he’d lost, and it makes him ache with nostalgia, and something curls warm in his belly. “I’m good at this, Tony,” Steve tells him, and Tony’s whole body shudders. 

Tony decides he’s going to ride that feeling as long as he can.

“I want a safeword,” he says, hating how his voice is getting away from him, hating how he wants to be saying _get the fuck off me_  and isn’t. He shouldn’t have to ask for this, he shouldn’t feel like he’s fighting to keep his freedom, he shouldn’t be  _angry_  -

But Tony can’t go to work with thumb-shaped bruises on his neck. People will ask questions.

Steve palms his ass, and his touch is so feather-light it sends tremors creeping up his spine.

“No,” Steve is saying. “You won’t need one.” Tony feels it then, his bound hands against Steve’s hot skin. Steve brushes his bed-tousled hair away from the ear that’s not pressed against the rug and breathes deliberately against his neck.

“I promise,” he whispers, and then he’s working the gag into Tony’s mouth.

\- - -

Tony doesn’t lose himself in subspace like he should.

He does scream and arch his back as Steve takes him carefully apart like he’s never meant anything at all. Steve’s prep is cursory at best, and then he’s using him (there’s no other word for the way he fucks into Tony’s body) like it’s all he’s good for. Steve spits out words, ugly words, tells Tony he doesn’t deserve this, that he should be so lucky, that he’s a poor excuse for a man.

He thinks maybe he enjoyed this part more when it wasn’t all true.

Tony doesn’t realize he’s hard until Steve is bringing him off with ruthless efficiency. When he comes, it’s fast and brutal and his orgasm rips through him so violently Steve has to hold him up through it.

Steve takes the gag out of his mouth (he’s left bite marks in the bit) and shoves his fingers into Tony’s mouth and holds them there until Tony lowers his eyes and sucks his own mess away.

He realizes his cheeks are wet when Steve pulls his fingers out. 

“Shh,” Steve says, “It’s ok. You're just coming down. Don’t you feel better now?”

“Yes,” Tony lies, his eyes wide and blank and leaking tears.

\- - -

Tony limps into the kitchen.

Steve leaves a note this time, hastily scrawled on a napkin under a fresh mug of coffee.

Gone to meet Jessica, it says. She says she has intel. She might know where Fury is. Don’t even think about tailing us.

I love you, the post-script says.

Tony balls it up and chucks it at the wall as hard as he can.

There are bruises on his wrists, he notices, as his hand falls.

\- - -

Tony doesn’t want to be in the tower. 

He’s sure Jarvis heard them, heard him begging and whining and screaming like a whore. It’s nothing he hasn’t heard before, but it’s the room, it’s feeling the rug under his feet and wanting to fucking burn it, it’s looking at the closet and knowing Steve knows where all the toys are, it’s knowing it was a little awful and really fucking dangerous.

(It’s knowing he came all over himself because there’s apparently nothing that gets him off faster than being treated like shit.)

He calls the armor (it takes almost a full minute to get there, and he realizes he doesn’t remember where he left it last) and dives entirely gracelessly from the Helipad and rockets down Park. It hurts, where the plates interface with his body, so much of him is bruised. He feels it when he banks, how the pressure on his hips intensifies.

The sooner he finds Fury, the sooner he can stop doing this.

He just wants to be Tony again.

\- - -

He starts with the barbershop.

Fury, he knows, has these fucking bolt-holes all over the city, and more outside. It’s a slim shot, he’d probably be better served by working with Maria, but Steve is already meeting with Jessica and this feels better than doing nothing.

He knows if he sits still for too long he’ll have time to think about what he’s playing at with Steve.

There’s nothing in the bunker underneath the abandoned roller rink, there’s nothing down in the warehouse in the business district, there’s nothing in the basement of the gay bar on 84th, there’s nothing. Every time, he scans, and there’s nothing, no electrical signatures, no masked heat signatures, nothing on infrared, but he lands every time, he drops through rotted floors and crawls through carefully-concealed holes in cinderblock walls and doesn’t find a damn thing.

He supposes he wasn’t really expecting to, but it gives him an excuse to fly around, to punch in through rotted floors and feel like he’s being assertive.

He stays out for hours, circling, the lights beneath him for awhile over the city, and then gone, as he soars out over the ocean where there aren’t lights for him to navigate by, where the black could swallow him up if he let himself fall.

\- - -

The sun is rising as he’s flying back, and he’s feeling dejected and ill when Steve is calling on his encrypted channel.

He shouldn’t be surprised, at this point.

“Yeah,” he says, feeling caught.

“You need to get back to the Helicarrier.” And there it is, the call to return. He’s been out too long, he’s tasted freedom and shed responsibility for a few too many hours.

“What happened to I’m-on-vacation,” he says, ducking under a crane.

“I’m not in the mood,” Steve snaps. “This can’t wait.”

“Ok,” Tony says, stricken, “I’m sorry, I’m coming.”

“Just get here,” Steve says.

\- - -

There’s shouting before anything else. Tony hears it down the hall.

“ – playing with your food –“

“ – I’m doing what I have to –“

“ – you’re taking liberties –“

“ – I’d like to see you do better, but you’re hiding in Tokyo, aren’t you, you could be helping –"

“ – I am throwing you a bone, Captain, you should be thanking me –“

Tony walks into the morgue, and they fall silent.

Jessica is covered in blood, her hair falling all into her face. Tony thinks it’s affecting her pheromones, because he feels vastly uncomfortable as soon as he walks into the room. Steve is red in the face, his hands balled into fists, trembling in his anger.

“Am I interrupting?” Tony says. He doesn’t have a fucking clue what they’re on about, but he suspects it’s his fault again (it’s always his fault), that it’s Steve getting shit for doing what Tony’s made him do.

“No,” Steve says, his gaze locked on Jessica’s face, “no, we were done, weren’t we.”

“Nice to see you again, Tony,” Jessica says, still staring Steve down. “Gonna chain me to a chair and work me over?”

“No, but I could arrest you if that would speed this along,” he says.

“Save it,” Steve snarls. “We have bigger problems.”

“Ok,” he says, carefully choosing his words, because there are so many things this could be (so many things that could be his fault), that could set Steve off. “What’s going on?”

Jessica reaches an arm out and wrenches one of the cadaver drawers out of the wall.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Tony says, because there’s a naked Skrull lying on that table.

It could be a woman, lean and sinuous, but Tony knows that shade of green, knows the high sculpt of the cheekbones and the ridges on her chin and those ears. She’s wearing Elektra’s headscarf.

“She died in Japan,” Jessica says. “Logan didn’t want me to bring her back, but I thought you needed to see this.”

“Great,” Tony says, already raising the alert level to yellow. Maria can chew him out later. “When did this happen?”

“Yesterday,” Jessica says. “She – it – died, and then it morphed. The thing is, we couldn’t tell until it was dead. Peter had no idea. Logan couldn’t smell her, I think his ego was bruised.”

“Egos aside,” Tony says, still trying to work his brain around the fact that there’s a Skrull lying dead on that table, “what the hell, what were you doing in Japan, are you all there?”

“If I told you that, you’d have to arrest me –“

“Do you know where Fury is?” Tony says, rounding on her.

“Bloody hell, would you people stop asking me that –“

Steve closes a hand on his bicep, and Tony puts all of his energy into not flinching away. “She has to go,” he says urgently, “she’s only on the Helicarrier because we had a meeting anyway-”

“This wasn’t part of your liasing to begin with?” Tony says indignantly.

Jessica runs a hand through her hair. “I do need to get back. They might think you shot me and then they’d send someone to eviscerate you–”

“We don’t just shoot people,” Tony says angrily, “I’m really fucking sick -”

“Well, how would we know that,” she snaps, “you’re using Sentinels to chase us now, next you’ll tell me Barnes was an accident –“

“Enough!” Steve shouts. “Jessica, go.” She casts a last filthy look Steve’s way, and a condescending one Tony’s, and then she’s beating a hasty retreat out the side door.

Tony wants to sink into the floor when Steve turns that fury his way.

“What took you so long,” he snaps.

“I was out,” Tony says, “I was looking for Fury, I’m sorry, I thought you were busy today-“

“I was,” Steve says, and he sits heavily in one of the swiveling chairs and thumbs at the catches on his jumpsuit. There is sweat beading on his brow, and his hair looks fucked around, like he’s had an especially trying day, like he’s about to fall apart at the seams.

(He’s not, though. That’s not how he operates.)

“We need to deal with this,” he says, his voice a little too short for Tony’s comfort.

Tony circles around the far side of Elektra-Skrull’s body and snaps on a pair of latex gloves.

She’s bleeding from several stab wounds, red blood, it’s run all over her abs and trickled down into her pubes. She’s startlingly human, and she still looks like Elektra – if it wasn’t for the green, and the ridges on her chin, and the slightly more austere bone structure, she could be a perfect copy.

He remembers, when they were all captured, the time they spent in that Skrull ship, how they were green all the time, how Reed found a way to detect them. But this one - she was in their ranks. Living with them. Fighting with them.

This is – worse, he thinks.

“Steve,” Tony says. “She – it - looks – it looks just like her.”

Steve runs a hand through his grimy hair. “Yeah, I know. It’s like they cloned her,” he says grimly.

“I’m calling Reed,” Tony says. “How did Logan not sense anything? This is – really fucking problematic, it’s – I mean, it's new, we used to be able to detect them, remember, Reed built a thing -”

“No one knew. Jessica couldn’t tell, Peter couldn’t tell-“

“Steve,” Tony sighs, turning the exam light off, “you can’t keep talking to them, the amnesty’s done.”

“If I hadn’t been, we wouldn’t know anything about this.”

“We don’t know anything about this! There’s a body, Steve. That’s a Skrull. There are probably more Skrulls, we’re probably fucked.”

“We’ll handle this,” Steve says, so certain it’s infuriating.

“If there’s one of them, there’s more of them. We need to be on top of this yesterday.”

“There’s nothing to be gained from losing our heads,” Steve says coolly. “There’s nothing we can do until Reed gets here-“

“Fine,” Tony says, pacing, “then let’s talk about you and Jessica and why you were ready to rip each other’s throats out.”

Steve’s face twitches, a barely perceptible, nano-seconds long tic that Tony wouldn’t have been able to detect without Extremis.

“It’s nothing,” he says, but there’s a hair’s edge of anger that’s bleeding through. “She’s unhappy with me.”

Tony laughs hollowly. He can’t help himself, he wants to piss Steve off, because Steve deserves to feel some of what he’s been feeling lately. “Yeah, I’ll bet,” he says, and now that he’s started, he can’t stop. “You fucked them all over, didn’t you, they think you just rolled over, they think you’re a treasonous little shit–”

“You need to calm down,” Steve says, entirely unimpressed.

“No, you need to tell me what’s  _wrong_  with you and her-“

“Do I ask you for answers when you lock yourself in the basement, Tony?” Steve cuts in, snarling.  “Do I make you explain yourself whenever you decide to get drunk because you can’t deal with life like the rest of us have to?”

“No,” Tony says. 

“No,” Steve says.

“You don’t tell me anything,” Tony says bitterly, turning away, throwing his gloves in the bin.

But then, of course, Steve is pulling him back, his fingers closed painfully around Tony’s wrist.

“Hey,” he says sharply. “We disagreed. That’s all there is.”

“Fine,” Tony says.

“Look at me,” Steve says.

Tony looks.

“You need to trust me,” he says.

“I do,” Tony spits out. “You don’t seem to trust me.”

Steve’s face darkens. “You need to relax. You’re getting upset over nothing.”

“So I’m upset,” Tony snaps. “It fucking happens, Steve, we can’t all be perfect like you are.”

Steve squeezes his wrist harder.

“You’re hurting me,” Tony says. “Let go.”

“Am I?” Steve says, dragging Tony closer by the waist. “Does it hurt?”

“Yes, it hurts,” Tony spits.

“Good,” Steve hisses. “You need to be taken down a notch.”

“You need to back the fuck off,” Tony says, trying and failing to wrench himself out of Steve’s arms.

“No, you need to stop questioning me at every turn,” Steve hisses in his ear, pulling him tightly against his massive chest. “You don’t care I’m meeting with them, not really, you just don’t like that it can’t be you doing it. You don’t like that you aren’t in the loop anymore. You don’t like being blind.”

“Fuck you,” Tony says.

“Yeah,” Steve says, bitter and cold, “That’s what I thought.”

“Get your damn hands off me,” Tony says, so fucking sick of Steve being right about everything, sick of him knowing all his weaknesses, all the things that make him hurt most.

“Oh, please,” Steve says, “I’m not holding you anywhere you don’t want to be.”

Tony punches Steve in the jaw with his free hand.

He knows how to fight, but Steve is a solid wall of muscle and Tony is tired and hasn’t been working out. It turns out to be a glancing blow, and Steve’s head barely even snaps to the side. Steve lets go of his wrist, though, stepping backwards momentarily, shock written all over his face, and that’s all the time Tony needs to send the gold creeping out from under his suit. 

Steve thumbs his lip, he’s bleeding a little. Tony couldn’t be more thrilled.

“Yeah,” Tony says. “How’s it feel, Steve? You gonna hit me back?”

“Calm down, Tony,” he says, but he’s clearly angry too, it's dancing in his eyes. Tony feels his breath harsh in his nose, feels his own rage boiling down and welling up.

“Make me,” he says desperately, half-snarling, It’s entirely the wrong thing to say, he realizes a fraction of a second too late, because then Steve is wrenching his arm up behind his back and pushing him face-first into the wall. 

“Why do you always do this,” Steve says, and Tony couldn't get away if he tried. “Why do you always push, Tony?”

This is why this happens, he realizes, it’s as much him as it is Steve.

“I don’t know,” Tony says. 

But that’s not true, he knows exactly why.

"What is your problem," Steve says. 

"What's your fucking problem, Steve," Tony says, because he's tired of people blaming him, even if it is his fault, and then words are coming out of his mouth as soon as he's thought them. "Let’s talk about this bullshit where you tie me up and have your way with me and leave and then I can’t fucking sit down when I brief the crew on things,” he's saying, emboldened, “let’s talk about how you looked at my private security files–“

“Let’s talk about how you couldn’t bother to make it to Sharon’s funeral, even though you’re the one who signed off on putting her in Latveria to begin with, Tony,” Steve roars. “Let’s talk about how she was pregnant and I had to hear it from a fucking morgue technician because you thought if you didn't tell me I wouldn't find out!”

That wasn’t in the autopsy report.

“Wh- I didn’t know she was pregnant,” Tony says, and he’s inches away from begging Steve to let him go, because his arm is twisted up and his eyes are watering from the pain. “I didn’t fucking sign the orders, Steve, I didn’t know anything about it -"

“Stop lying to me!” Steve bellows. “You sign all the orders, Tony! What is wrong with you, why can’t you just be honest with me?”

“I don’t remember,” Tony yells. “I don’t fucking remember, Steve!” And he’s looking, he’s looking at the autopsy report where it’s written, he’s looking at the pictures of Sharon’s fucking fetus, and yeah, that’s why Maria looked at him like he was insane when she tried to arrest him in Latveria, because that’s his signature on those documents, sending Sharon to Eastern Europe.

He’s losing his mind.

“BULLSHIT,” Steve says, slamming him against the wall again, for emphasis, Tony imagines. “How can you not remember?”

“I don’t know,” Tony says, feeling terribly lost, all of his bluster gone, “I don't remember assigning her there, I - how could I miss that on the autopsy report, I’m seeing things – people I used to know-”

“You’re a goddamn piece of work,” Steve says with disgust.

“And you’re not listening,” Tony says desperately, feeling like Steve is crushing his ribs. “Steve, please-”

“I’m listening, I just don’t believe you,” Steve says viciously into his ear. “You have this habit, Tony, of getting off clean while everyone else suffers for your mistakes.”

“Steve,” he gasps, “let me go, my arm.”

“No,” Steve growls.

Tony stomps on his foot, and it’s all the leverage he can get before they’re wrestling on the floor. He calls the armor, and it’s crashing through the window, but something is wrong, it won’t line up with his skin, it won’t interface with the ports right. He tries rebooting, but then Steve is on top of him. One of the shoulder plates hits him in the side of the head and he heaves it so hard it sticks in the wall.

“What’s wrong,” he says, and there’s something wrong with his voice, it’s cracking. He hauls Tony up so he can punch him in the face. “What’s wrong with your armor? Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. can’t fight his own battles?”

**Firmware error** , his brain tells him, and then he’s tasting blood.

Tony kicks wildly at Steve’s chest, but Steve weighs more than he does out of his armor, and he’s settled his full mass on Tony’s hips. “Stop,” he says, “I’m sorry, just stop, I want to stop.”

“You’re always sorry,” Steve says, and there’s such pain in his voice. “What do the rest of us get?” But he’s not hitting Tony anymore, he’s sitting back on his heels, and when he picks up his head, Tony sees he’s shaking with inaudible sobs, quivering with angry, desperate tears.

“Oh my god,” Tony says, because Steve is crying and everything just gets worse all the fucking time. “Steve, I swear, I didn’t know-”

“You ruin everything,” Steve says hoarsely.

“Please let me up,” Tony moans, wheezing, feeling like he’s been run over by a truck. “Steve, you’re hurting me, I’m sorry, but just –“

“Sometimes I hate you,” Steve says, his voice flat and far away. “Sometimes I want to hurt you,” Why do you do this to me,” he whispers, and Tony isn’t sure if he’s talking to himself or to Tony. “Why do you make me feel this way?”

Tony closes his eyes and feels utterly wretched. “I don’t know, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” He can say it thousands of times, but he can’t get Sharon back for him, can't get his - child back, God, Steve's would-be-child. He feels the guilt slicing away at his insides, and he wonders how long Steve’s been swallowing this down.

How Steve can stand to even look at him.

“But I still want you,” Steve says raggedly, his eyes still glistening with tears. “I want to touch you.”

“Why,” Tony asks, knocking his head back into the floor, “Why do you even want me, Steve, you touch me all the time, and all I do is hurt you.” 

“I love you,” Steve says, sounding wrecked. “Tony,” he murmurs, bending to touch their foreheads together, “Please, I need this, I can’t-”

“Ok, I know,” Tony says, knowing that he'll do anything to make this even marginally better. “I know, what can I do, Steve, tell me what I can do,” he forces out. 

“Show me how sorry you are,” Steve says, desolation in his eyes.

Breathing, breathing is control, breathing is still a thing he can do, he’s fine. Steve - this is how Steve calms down. They all have their vices.

Who knew.  

“I love you,” Tony says desperately, and he knows he’s going to do whatever Steve asks of him, he was always going to do whatever Steve could ask of him, this is what they do. “I don’t always understand, but I’m trying, Steve, I’m – whatever you want, I’m here.”

“Let me," Steve says, his voice dead and dark, “let me, you're gonna do this for me, and then you’re going to fix this problem, Tony, you’re going to meet with Reed and figure out what the hell is going on.”

“Yes,” Tony says earnestly, because the sooner this is over, the sooner he can run and hide, he can wrap himself in metal and fly away, he can have a drink.

Steve kisses him like he’s the only thing that matters in the world, and Tony's heart swells a little in his chest. “Yes,” he agrees, breathless, “Use your mouth.”

Tony draws the gold back into his bones, and Steve is kissing him, Steve is on top of him, Steve is all over him. 

It's fine, he tells himself, as Steve undoes his tie and winds it around his hands, as Steve pulls him to his knees.

This is what he needs, too, he thinks, as he feels himself getting hard, so what if he hates himself.

When Steve holds his head and slides into his mouth, Tony tells himself he wants it. 

Steve loves him. 

It's fine.


	13. Keep Your Powder Dry

Tony runs the DNA himself because he isn’t going to call Sal up when he reeks of sex and possibly Steve's come is still drying in his beard.

He's lost again, he can't get past it, on his knees on the floor, all the times he's hated it and done it anyway, all the times Steve has fucked him and he's cried and begged and lost his composure - 

He’s embarrassing as a person.

_Carol Danvers to see you_ , someone is saying through his brain.

He realizes he’s fucked up all the samples.

He swears and throws the entire tray of tubes in the sink, because his head is pounding and his throat is raw from swallowing Steve’s fluids and all he wants is a fucking nap.

_I’m coming_ , he answers hoarsely.  _30 minutes._

He drags himself up to his quarters so he can have a shower before he sees Carol.

\- - -

Carol looks weary, when he finally makes it down to his office.

“This makes me nervous,” she’s saying. Her costume is fraying, he thinks. She looks worn.

Tony stares at her blankly. “Ok,” he says.

“I don’t like that we’re using Sentinels,” she says.

“Ok,” Tony says again, because he’s had all these thoughts already.

“Ok?” she says. “Tony, what are we doing?”

“We’re doing what we have to,” he says automatically.

“What happened to your face,” she says, her voice dull, and Tony reaches a hand up to his jaw, because he’d forgotten. He doesn’t look in the mirror anymore.

“I was sparring with Steve,” he says, quietly pulling the cuffs on his shirt firmly over his wrists.

Carol presses her lips into a thin line. “Oh,” she says. There are circles under her eyes. “Tony,” she says again, tentatively.

“What,” he says shortly. What does she expect from him, he wonders. Everyone expects answers from him. Solutions. Don’t they know he’s given all he has to give? 

“Never mind,” she says.

“No,” he says, sighing, because he’s snapping at Carol, and she doesn’t deserve it. “I’m sorry, I’m tired, tell me.”

She bites her lip and she looks absolutely miserable. “How-” she stops for a second, but she breathes deeply and presses on. “Did you talk to Jessica?”

“What?” he says. “Why, are you in contact with her?”

“I mean, barely,” she says.

“Carol,” Tony starts.

“I was,” she says, “I was and then she went over to Steve’s side, and she was here, Tony, I know, and she didn’t even come find me, she didn’t even fucking take the time to talk to me –“

“She’s a fugitive, Carol –“

“So was Steve!” she says angrily, and she looks to be on the verge of tears. “So was Steve, and you made him not-a-fugitive because you’ve loved him for years, it’s all over your face, but we can’t all be Tony Stark and make the world over the way we want it to be, some of us just have to live with knowing we’ve fucked up.”

“Are you – were you two a thing?” Tony says.

The look on Carol’s face is more than enough to confirm it.

“Do you think they’re screwing?” Carol says, and she’s crying now. “Steve and Jess.” There are tears running down her lovely face, and Tony knows that this was his job, too, before it was ever his duty. They’ve been picking each other up for as long as he can remember, now.

“No,” Tony says, as kindly as he knows how, “Carol, what makes you think that?”

“I don’t know,” she wails, “Neither of them will talk to me, and I know they were fighting, I heard it two decks away. I just want everything to be like it was, and it’s not going to be, it’s not going to be.”

“I know,” he says, folding her into his arms. He can feel her shaking apart, and it scares him, because this isn’t a thing she normally does, it’s not a thing any of them normally do.

“I’m sorry,” she says into his shoulder. “It’s stupid, of course they aren’t. I just – I wish she’d at least take the time to argue with me, too.”

“It’s not stupid,” he says, wishing he had someone to comfort him like this.

Then she’s pushing away, she’s had her moment of weakness, and she’s straightening up, she’s putting her mask back on, she’s combing her hair behind her ear.

“We’re not a team anymore,” she says.

“Yeah,” Tony says, “I know.”

“You can’t tell anyone,” she says, and it’s already back up, the wall, the steely Colonel has returned, she-who-gives-no-fucks.

“I won’t,” he says, and then she’s excusing herself.

He watches her go, listens to her footfalls fade. Tony suspects she didn’t intend to snot all over him when she asked to meet, and he suspects it was never about the Sentinels, and he wonders if Carol’s instincts are right.

Then he remembers, he remembers he can’t trust anyone, that she could have been a Skrull, just now. If they got their claws into the ones Underground, why not his team? Carol, a Skrull, planting seeds of doubt. Because Steve wouldn’t be screwing Jessica, they weren’t even that close, there’s no reason, no logical reason that would be happening.

He’s trying to decide if someone – a Skrull - could fake tears like that, look him in the eye and win his sympathy, when he feels his nose dripping.

He’s only looked down for a split second before blood comes gushing out everywhere. He swears, grabs a handful of toilet paper from the bathroom and lopes up to C deck to change his shirt.

It doesn’t do to be paranoid, he decides. He’s already having trouble with what’s real.

He doesn’t think he can stand losing anyone else.

\- - -

He changes as quickly as he can, because if he stays in one place too long, Steve will come to find him, and he’ll be angry about something (so many somethings, Tony’s given him a lifetime to choose from), and it will end with Tony pressed into the carpet, Tony kneeling at his feet, Tony giving all he has to give.

He needs to go. He needs to do things. He’s an important person. He used to know how to do things, didn’t he?

He slips back down to the morgue, which is empty now, and quietly bags Elektra-Skrull’s body. It’s already started to decompose. It’s jarring to see half of her face clinging to bone when it was flesh not a few hours ago, but he suspects that their cellular structure is marginally different enough to account for that.

He swallows down a handful of Vicodin before he goes, and makes sure his nose has stopped bleeding, but then he sends out the message to all of them.

He reboots the armor, but he’s able to get it on, it feels secure, and there’s nothing he can detect that accounts for why it wouldn’t work before.

That’s good enough, he decides, and kicks off one of the lower flight decks, an alien corpse cradled in his arms.

He hopes against hope that he’s not alone in this.

\- - -

He waits for almost an hour, but they show.

It’s Reed who comes first. “Whose body is that,” he says, as if it were a thrilling curio.

“Wait,” Tony says. “I want to wait for the others.”

Stephen – or his ghost, his astral projection, whatever - materializes not long after that, and hovers next to where Tony’s pulled up a chair.

“Nice to see you,” Tony says. “I’m so glad you could make it.”

“The astral plane is sufficient for this meeting,” he says. “I thought it best.”

“Of course you did,” Tony says. 

“I thought we weren’t doing this anymore,” Namor says, striding in with Black Bolt, Charles coasting in in his wheelchair close on their heels.

“We have a problem,” Tony says.

“I had a problem when my empire was collapsing around me,” Namor says. “It’s so nice to know you’d have come had I called.”

“You could have,” Tony says.

“What’s this about,” Charles says.

Tony reaches a hand out for the zipper. “Jessica Drew brought me a present.”

“Good god,” Reed says. “Is that a Skrull?”

“She was posing as Elektra,” Tony says.

“Who’s Elektra,” Reed says.

“Daredevil’s Girlfriend. They found her in Japan.”

Namor scoffs, and Tony is overcome by an urge to punch him in the face.

“It’s true,” Stephen says, “I was there.”

“You were there?” Tony spits. “You were there and you couldn’t be bothered to tell me?”

“This is why I’m not here in person,” Stephen says. “You’ve been acting erratically, half of the underground think you might be a Skrull –“

“I have not been acting erratically,” Tony says defensively.

“You’re sending Sentinels after us,” he says.

“I gave you an amnesty,” Tony spits back.

“Enough,” Charles says. “What do you mean for us to do?”

“I think this is our fault,” Tony says.

“What is this,” Namor says.

“If there’s one, there’s more,” Tony says. “I think this is the beginning of something bigger, I think we pissed them off when we invaded their home planet –“

“We didn’t invade,” Namor says, “we visited-“

“We were trespassing,” Tony says.

“She’s decomposing fast,” Reed says, bending over the body, “I’d like to autopsy the remains as quickly as I can, you probably shouldn’t have brought her out of cold storage, Tony –“

“It’s one Skrull,” Charles says. “It’s no more indicative of an invasion than the occasional Skrull ship that gets through our perimeter.”

“It’s one Skrull we’ve found,” Tony says. “There are going to be more. There are probably already more, there has never been a better time, tactically, to infiltrate us. Everything that’s happened in the past year – we’re a mess, right now, Stephen, you’re on another plane because you don’t want to be in the same room with me, Atlantis is a mess, we have no unified force to speak of to repel anything of this magnitude, the mutant community –“

“Listen to yourself,” Namor says.

“No one could detect it,” Tony says, “Logan couldn’t smell it, Peter couldn’t tell, I’m assuming you couldn’t tell, Stephen, or I would have heard about it –“

“Tony,” Charles says insistently. “It could be nothing. It’s only one.”

“Look,” Tony says desperately. “We’re in a shitty position right now, this is just what they want, they want us to overlook this -”

“You’re not doing well yourself, are you,” Reed says quietly, and then everyone is turning to look at him.

“Yeah,” Tony says, “I’m aware, I know what you think of S.H.I.E.L.D.-“

“No,” Reed says, “Not the job, I’m talking about your scans.”

“What?” Tony says.

“The scans you sent me.”

Tony feels very cold, and everyone is looking at him.

“I don’t think this is the time -”

“I looked at them,” Reed continues, and his face is deadly serious, even though he sounds mildly fascinated. “Your suspicions were right, there is something wrong with your frontal lobe. You’re experiencing some sort of degradation of your neural pathways, I’m not sure if it’s because of Extremis or just the natural progression of your biology, some genetic pre-disposition, but it’s widespread and Extremis only seems to be aggravating it instead of repairing your cells like it should.”

“What,” Tony says weakly. “Really, Reed? You had to bring this up now?”

“It’s relevant,” Reed shrugs.

“He’s right,” Charles says. “You’ve been keeping things from us, Tony.”

“Get out of my head,” Tony snarls.

“You’re hallucinating,” Charles says, “Your judgment is being affected. It does go some way towards explaining your actions as of late –“

“First, it’s called HIPAA, secondly, fuck all of you,” Tony says. “Fine, I’m having a few migraines, but that is a very real Skrull lying in front of us –“

“And it’s very dead,” Namor says. 

“It’s not the migraines I’m concerned with,” Charles says, gravely and he knows, he sees what Tony’s been doing, he sees all his awful mistakes and the failures, he must know what he’s been doing -

“I am not compromised,” Tony says. “I haven’t gone insane, My intelligence hasn’t evaporated because there’s a bug in my programming, ok, you,” he points at Reed, “had absolutely no right to tell _anyone_ about this-”

“It’s still a valid threat,” Charles decides. “But I don’t see that there’s anything we can actively do until we have more information.”

“Yes, I agree,” Reed says. “I’ll examine the body, see what we can determine at a cellular level, but unless we find more Skrulls, I think we have to treat this as an isolated incident.”

Charles speaks again. “Black Bolt agrees. We’ve seen nothing to indicate an invasion is imminent. There would be activity, a heightened Kree presence in our sector.”

“This shouldn’t leave this room,” Stephen says, “Of course, we can’t do anything about those who already know about this –“

“And there are others,” Charles says, leveling his gaze at Tony.

“You’d all be listening if it was Steve in this circle instead of me,” Tony says.

“It’s not,” Namor says flatly. “I didn’t trust you before you were insane, and I don’t trust you now, Stark.” And then he’s flying away, soaring up through the crumbling roof.  

Tony glares at the ones who remain. “Well,” he says. “Anyone else going to leave in a huff?”

No one speaks.

“We need to be vigilant,” he says, going through his crew roster, thinking of Maria, of Carol, of Dugan, “There have to be more, we’ll ferret them out-“

“Wild speculation,” Charles says.

“Get the fuck out of my brain,” Tony says.

“I think we’re done here,” Stephen says.

“Fine,” Tony says. “There’s nothing wrong with me.”

“I’m still going to examine her – it. Do you want the body back?” Reed says, as if he can’t be bothered to choose a side.

“Yes,” Tony hisses. “Bring it back yourself. I’ll see you on the Helicarrier.”

“Tony,” Charles says. “We don’t think less of you-”

“No,” Tony says. “It’s abundantly clear what you think of me.”

He leaves them, then, rockets out through the roof, and then the wind is whistling in his ears.

\- - -

He can’t go home.

He can’t face Steve like this, because Reed is going to be on the Helicarrier, and Steve knows everything that goes on on the Helicarrier, and Steve will know Tony’s been keeping this from him, he’ll know his brain is damaged, he’ll know.

Tony feels ill at the prospect of Steve’s brand of comfort.

He doesn’t want to go back to the Helicarrier, and he doesn’t want to go back to the tower, so he goes to the James.

He gets some looks, striding in in his armor, but it’s nothing they haven’t seen, everyone knows he’s Iron Man, everyone knows Tony Stark loves to be flashy, loves the attention, eats it up with a spoon.

No one knows who he is, he thinks, as he rides the elevator up. No one looks beyond that, no one sees Tony Stark, they see his fucking suit, they see his power, they see some man who makes the world go round.

He doesn’t want any of it.

His suite is impeccably clean and lonely as always, but the bar is fully-stocked, and really, that’s all he needs. A few shots of rum and it feels like home, the edges are softer, the Helicarrier feels worlds away, he feels safer, secreted away. 

Tony.

He’s mildly drunk when he calls his service, but not too drunk to know what he’s doing. “I want the same one you sent me last time,” he says. “Blond, stacked, blue eyes. Chris, that was his name, I want him.” They tell him he can be over in 30 minutes, and Tony raises his glass to that and leans back into his pillows.

He feels incredibly guilty as soon as he’s done it. He takes another shot.

He can’t be bothered with Skrulls when there’s a bottle calling his name.

He rolls around in the nest of pillows on the bed feeling sorry for himself until the door opens. Tony’s apparently left it unlocked, because Chris is sauntering in in a blue dress shirt that sets off his eyes, his jacket slung carelessly over his shoulder.

“Hi,” he says, looking terribly amused.

“Don’t laugh at me,” Tony says morosely. “D’you want a drink?” He gestures vaguely in the direction of the liquor cabinet.

“I wouldn’t deign to laugh at Tony Stark,” he says, but he pours himself some gin after handling the bottles. He has an easy lope about him, and he throws his jacket over the high-backed chair by the fireplace, downs his glass in one effortless swig.

“So,” he says conversationally, loosening his tie. “Rough day?”

“Come here,” Tony says, forcing himself to sit up.

Chris smiles that easy smile Tony can’t tell is real or not, but he settles on the edge of the bed, looks at Tony from under his ridiculous lashes, and Tony knows that he’s going to hell.

“I shouldn’t be doing this,” Tony says, but he smells so good, and his eyes are so much kinder than he’d even remembered, and he’s leaning closer every second.

Chris smiles understandingly. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to,” he says. “I’m good for conversation, too, you know.”

“No,” Tony says, leaning into him, snaking a hand into his blond hair. “You don’t know,” he says, “It’s not what I thought it would be.” He’s momentarily overwhelmed by the truth of that statement, and so very grateful he’s not slurring his speech, because then Chris would leave, and that would be just as awful, because Tony really needs not to be alone right now.

“Ok,” Chris says, obviously not having any idea what Tony is talking about, but he pulls Tony in by the waist and presses a filthy kiss to his neck. “What do you want, Mr. Stark,” he says, his voice smooth as silk.

“Don’t fucking call me that,” Tony says. “Tony.”

“What do you want, Tony,” Chris says, entirely unfazed, licking his way up to Tony’s ear, picking at the knot on Tony’s tie.

“I just,” Tony says, because he doesn’t know what he wants anymore. “I want to fuck you,” he decides quietly, and it hits him, that he’s never said those words to Steve, he’s never been given that chance, none of it has ever been how it should have been, and it’s entirely unfair.

“Mm,” Chris whispers, biting at his earlobe. “That can be arranged.”

“No, wait,” Tony says, “fuck.”

He wonders why he’s doing this, and it’s not what he wants, he doesn’t want, he can’t, he doesn’t have the energy to expend on thrusting, he just wants to lie there and be pleasured and feel like he’s wanted.

“Tony,” Chris is saying, easing his hands around Tony’s chest, “It’s ok, we don’t have to –“

“No,” Tony says, again, “can you, I changed my mind, I wanna, you pitch, just - ”

“What,” Chris croons, carding a gentle hand through Tony’s hair. “What do you want?”

“Just be gentle with me,” Tony says, feeling the tears welling up in his eyes. “Please.”

\- - -

He sends Chris away when they’re done.

He’d like him to stay, he realizes, as he listens to Chris shower, as he watches him pull on his clothes and fit his jacket over his perfectly sculpted body.

He’d like him to be Steve, he thinks, as his buzz wears away, as despair creeps in and he starts to get a headache.

“It was a pleasure,” Chris says, as he pockets Tony’s tip, and Tony would like to think he means it.

He lies there for a long time, lets the data buzz in his brain, tries to drown himself in it. He’d like to stay here in bed, with Chris and his kind eyes, with his soft hands that have managed to work nothing but pleasure from his battered frame, he’d like to nestle his tired head into his body and sob his cares away.

He knows, though. He’s Tony Stark. He doesn’t get a shoulder to cry on.

(He doesn’t deserve the kindness he’s had here, from this stranger.)

He launches himself out of bed and into the shower before he can think about that for too long.

\- - -

He scrubs at his face, and he’d like to scrub at his body, too, but he hurts, he’s sore (still) from being slammed into surfaces. He doesn’t look at himself any more than he has to, but it’s hard to miss, the purple blossoming just under his skin, how startling it looks under the hot water.

“Playing rough, huh?”

Tony drops the shampoo and slips. He hits the shower floor hard, lands on his hip, on his elbow, cracks his shoulder against the wall.

When he beats back the dizziness enough to pick his head up and look, it’s wretched.

She’s slumped there, against the wall next to the sliding door, one bloody hand pressed up against it, the red running into the lines on her palm, smearing on the glass. She’s curled up in the far corner of the shower, her clothes barely damp, eyes glassy with pain. There’s blood running out the corner of her mouth, more from her nose, staining her collar, blossoming pink against her throat. 

“You shouldn’t let him do that to you, love,” she says, as she’s sitting there across from him, dying. She coughs, and more blood bubbles up on her lips. She chokes, and she makes horrible sounds as she gasps for air.

“Oh my god,” Tony moans, curling tightly into the opposite wall, “This isn’t real, this isn’t real, this isn’t fucking real.” She’s dead, he held her in his arms as it happened, she’s dead, they all are, all of them, gone, his fault, why won’t they stay that way -

“You deserve better,” she says, and it’s exactly what he doesn’t need to hear.

Tony claws at his hair, and covers his ears. He rocks, as the water pounds down on his back, buries his face in his knees. “No I don’t,” he says, halfway to sobbing, “go away, go away, go away, leave me alone.”

He feels it, then, a blinding pain slicing through his head, and then his brain is seizing, he’s seizing, he grips his knees tighter and squeezes his eyes shut, he tries to breathe through the unbearable ache –

And then it’s gone, and he’s left panting on the floor, crescents dug into his biceps where he’s clawed at himself. His nose is bleeding again, he notices vaguely, it’s dripping down his chest and into the water that’s trickling towards the drain set into the middle of the enormous shower.

He lifts his head up, but Rumiko is gone.

“Ru,” he whispers into the shower. 

He wishes desperately that he’s wherever she’s disappeared to. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, look, I accidentally Carol/Jessica. NOT EVEN SORRY.
> 
> Also, there's totally an issue where the Illuminati actually meet and talk about Elektra, I think it's New Avengers but I don't remember. I borrowed some tensions and petty insults.


	14. I Only Have Eyes for You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Read the tags, etc. I'm not playing.

He pads out in a towel after what feels like hours huddling under the spray until he has his legs again.

He almost doesn’t see her.

She’s sitting in the armchair by the fireplace, fully suited. There’s a suppressed Glock on the table next to her, the barrel pointed in his direction. It’s only the shock of her hair under the backlighting, the gleam of her shiny black leather against the decadent creams that make him take notice. 

Natasha.

He clutches the towel around his waist. There was a time he would have dropped it, flippant and smirking. He’s too exposed, as it is, already, she can see all the things on his skin that point to less-than-savory conduct.

Weakness.

“Are you here to kill me?” he says quietly, because he can’t think of any other reason she’d be here.

“Would you like me to?” she says evenly.

Tony doesn’t move.

“Because I’ll tell you something,” she continues slowly. “For all that we've been through? I'd do it, for this.”

“I thought you were supposed to work for me,” he says, because his ability to conjure up any sort of meaningful response to bodily threats seems to have atrophied.

“I’m moonlighting,” she says darkly, “but I jumped on this job.”

“Why,” Tony says, his throat gone dry. Natasha always means business, but he hasn’t a clue what he’s done now, why there’s fire in her eyes, how she found him here. What she saw. “What’s the job,” he says, debating whether or not she’d notice if he tried to send the under-armor over his skin, uncertain as to whether or not it would matter. He’d be dead on the floor already, he decides, if she were here to assassinate him. 

She’s crossing the room to him, stalking carefully over the plush of the rug, holstering her Glock as she goes. “You’re a mess,” she says, running the tips of her fingers over where Steve’s left marks, pressing around the soft swell of his bruises with enough pressure to cause real pain. “You’re cheating on him. That's interesting.”

“My personal life is none of your business,” he says, wincing away from her touch. It doesn’t escape her, his discomfort, and her mouth quirks up in a smile a little.

“You’ve made it my business,” she says. “I’ve been watching this organization fall since you took the reins. I know everything you do, I know everywhere you go. I know who you fuck. Where you sleep at night. And I know you're a CEO, not a spymaster.”

“You’re supposed to be in Washington,” he says, as if anything he says will make her stop calling attention to his failures.

“Let me make this abundantly clear,” she says, ignoring him. “I don’t care about your registration act. I didn't, until you started hunting down my colleagues. I don’t care about your methods. I didn’t even care when you started using Sentinels. I am here as a favor, to a friend. Because you’re a disaster, and you desperately need help.”

“Thanks,” Tony says, “Shoot me or leave.”

“If I wanted you dead, you would be,” she says. “I’m here because you’re going to fuck us all over if you don’t get your head on straight,” she says, “given our little green problem.”

Tony blinks. “You know about Elektra?”

Natasha stares.

“I know more than you, apparently,” she says with patent disgust.

“I -”

“You really don’t know, do you,” she says. “You have your head so far up your ass, you’re so busy letting everything go to shit that you missed it altogether. I have no idea what Fury thinks you can do -”

“What did I do to you?” Tony says, genuinely bewildered. “Tell me, Natasha. How have I ruined  _your_  life?”

Natasha's stare could freeze hell. 

"Think about it," she hisses. 

Tony stares.

“Do you know,” she says, stepping in closer, “how many years we’d known each other? Do you know the things we’d been through together?” Tony feels metal at his throat, and he knows what it is, even though he can’t see it, her widow’s sting, primed and ready to lodge itself in his carotid. “Do you even know what it takes to find a person like that? Someone who has the same darkness in them you do?” she hisses.

“No,” Tony says, “Natasha, I don’t-“

“James Barnes,” she says, “was a better man than you’ll ever be.” Her bright green eyes look into his for a moment, and this is a novel experience for Tony, seeing her noticeably angry like this, her calm disrupted, having all that deadly skill ready to take him apart. “And he died at the hands of one of your machines. It’s a travesty. He deserved better.”

Tony’s throat works, and he feels the titanium against his Adam’s apple, but he can’t think of anything to say. He had no idea. He probably should have suspected, he probably should have known it was more than a loose professional association. They fought the Cold War together, didn’t they, they watched each other taken apart and put back together, from what little he knows.

He wonders if in between those brainwashing sessions, if they always came back to each other.

“You’re a waste,” she whispers.

“I know,” he says low in his throat.

“Do you?” she hisses. “Do you really?”

“Do it,” Tony says. “I deserve it.”

He didn’t think that this was how he’d go, in a towel in a hotel room, Natasha’s bullets in his brain.

Natasha lowers her hand and her mouth curls up in a sneer. “I’d love to,” she snarls, “but Tony Stark is too important to die right now.” She moves like she’s about to turn away, and Tony can’t stop himself.

“I though you had something to tell me,” he says, his voice quiet and still as he can make it. 

Natasha looks up at him like she’s furious he’s even dared to ask. Her eyes are fierce and proud and masking all that hurt, Tony is sure, and she stares intently before she speaks, finally.

She opens her fist and a piece of paper flutters to the ground. Tony doesn’t need to bend to see what’s on it; his brain latches on at the last second, scans the writing, coordinates, files it away. “Fury has something he wants you to see. So go see him,” she spits.

“What does that even mean,” he says weakly.

She considers him for a moment. “You’re so clever,” she says, and her voice is a flat place where nothing lives. “Use that brain of yours.” She leans forward and Tony shivers at her leather on his bare skin. “Not a word,” she whispers, her breath ghosting at his ear. "Not to anyone. Not even Steve."

And then she’s leaving, slipping out onto the balcony and somewhere into the night.

Tony sinks to his knees with his back against the wall. There’s nothing, no rush of endorphins to replace the feeling of readying himself for death, no triumph that he’s survived to live another day. Only fatigue, a bottomless ache where relief should be. 

He wonders if she’d have killed him if he’d begged.

\- - -

He knows how imperative it is that he go find Fury. It’s not a long trip, 15 minutes, maybe, the coordinates Natasha gave him put him in a state park around the Delaware Water Gap. Tony doesn’t remember Fury mentioning having safehouses there, but there’s a great deal Fury hasn’t ever told (won’t ever tell) him, apparently. Tony wonders what he’s hiding, away in the woods, why he had to drop off the map entirely. What’s so fucking important that Natasha couldn’t tell him herself. 

The more he thinks about it, the more he decides she just didn’t want to.

If Fury knew enough to send Natasha to his suite, he’s probably been watching, he’s probably been tracking Tony’s every move. It’s not like he doesn’t have time to go talk to him, Reed won’t be done with his exam, probably, for at least another few hours, and Steve –

He can’t face Steve right now. 

He can’t face Fury either, though.

Either way, though, he desperately needs food and caffeine and coffee and painkillers first. His head feels like a brick, and he feels unsteady, like he’s liable to shake apart at any moment. Low blood sugar, he tells himself, sleep deprivation, any number of things he hasn’t had the energy to pay attention to in weeks, ill-advised sex –

He dries himself with trembling hands and calls the armor to him, wincing as it hits his muscles.

He has to run, and so he does.

\- - -

There are lines Tony hasn’t crossed before.

Chris is one of the shittier things he’s done.

Steve is angry. He’s all hollowed now, scraped thin and carved out and all the things he thought he had taken from him (Tony’s fault). Always so short with him, never willing to talk like they used to.

But he gets it. War never changes, but it always ruins. And Steve is right. It was never about the bill. It was always about them, it was about both of them being a coward and both of them pretending it wasn’t so, it was about egos and pride and hopeless, desperate want, the kind that claws its own way into your heart and settles in like a cancer that can’t be excised without ripping the muscle to shreds.

He’d hoped, in his heart of hearts, that Steve might not have changed, either.

But Tony’s not different, not really. He’s his same self, he’s just closer to the surface. He’s been like this since Rumiko died, before, even, if he’s honest with himself. The grief’s been there, it’s just been dulled, pressed deeper down. You can’t feed it, he thinks, you can’t give it attention if your work demands all of you. The Avengers, Steve – was the distraction that clouded things, that made it further away. Quieter. It’s just - evident, now, what he’s like, what he’s feeling, pulled to the surface by these awful things he’s put in motion. He’s not used to having it so clearly visible, for having people see him for what he is and hate it.

Not Steve, though, Steve meets his darkness and more, rises to the challenge with a measure of his own. (Shouldn’t it be funny how Tony’s always thought he needed that, how he thought they wouldn’t work before because he was always too secretly sad and Steve was always so hopelessly good?)

It tears at him as he flies. The pettiness that led him here. How he can’t take it back. How he doesn’t have the luxury of letting himself worry about this (hasn’t ever had that luxury when it’s mattered) when he’s got an agency to run, when there are traitors in his midst, apparently.

_You’re a fool,_ he thinks. He wants too much.

He knows exactly why he did it. He’s still chasing that something Steve seems to have lost (that Tony seems to have taken), he’s still holding out for making love instead of fucking, for waking up without being sore, for kisses that don’t sting and bruise. For I love you’s with all of the sincerity and none of the anger.

And then he thinks of Carol sobbing into his shoulder, Luke hiding his family away somewhere, Natasha so very angry and hopelessly sad -

He should be grateful for having anything at all.

\- - -

Tony lands in the airlock with a dull clank, guilt heavy on his shoulders.

And then his space isn’t his own, because Steve is there, reclining on the couch in one of Tony’s t-shirts (too tight on his body) and black sweats, the picture of insouciance. Tony watches his eyes grow hard and cold at his entrance, and he imagines he can see the darkness gathering there.

“How was it,” Steve says, and Tony wants to stop right there in the airlock. 

“How was what,” he says, as if saying the words will make him more honest and what he’s done less true.

“How was screwing my doppelgänger?” Steve says.

Tony fixes his eyes on the low slump of the couch, blurs the textures into meaningless shadows. His mind spins up and searches, desperately, for something to offer so he doesn’t have to focus on the feeling of the knot in his stomach. His mind, it seems, is failing him. He can’t (shouldn’t) come up with a lie so he settles for releasing the plates of his armor and they fall to the ground with a dull clank.

“Well?” Steve is standing up, there’s a glass of scotch in his hand. “Did it surpass your wildest dreams? Did you find what you were looking for?”

There’s silence, just the rushing of the air through the filtration system and the hum of the engines, warm under their feet. Tony scrambles to find his footing in this tangle of loyalties and indiscretions he’s arranged for himself and can’t.

“I,” Tony says. How do you know, he thinks, but he’s never been able to keep anything from Steve for too long. “I don’t know what to say,” he says, feeling very small. “Are you mad?”

“No, I’m thrilled,” Steve says, and there’s already that knife’s edge of something hushed and angry in his voice.

“Ok, you have – every right to be upset,” Tony says. His legs won't move. His feet won't respond. Abort. 

"That's so gracious of you," Steve says darkly. 

"I was very upset," Tony says, and his tongue stumbles on it. "Moderately drunk," he says, quieter, and shuts his eyes tight at his own idiocy, he knows how it sounds the moment it's left his mouth and cringes. “I know, ok, no excuse, I’m just saying, it was stupid, I didn’t think, I’m just – shitty, I’m a shitty person, it was a shitty thing to do, but I can’t undo it, and I just -”

“Do you even want this?” Steve interjects.

“Yes,” says Tony. “I just.”

“Because  _I can’t tell_ ,” Steve snaps.

Tony moves around the desk, watching Steve's hands, watching his fists, waiting for him to move, to get up, to hit -

Tony buries his head in his hands and tries to look like he isn't shaking. “How do you even know about this,” he says to his palms, “are you following me?"

“Someone has to," Steve spits. "You’re the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. I was worried about you. Of course I was following you, I know your GPS signature, I looked at the security cams in your suite, it's not hard, I wanted to make sure you weren’t choking on your own vomit or something -”

“I was being threatened," Tony says, and he honestly doesn't even know if that wins or loses him points at this juncture, but it's better than  _sorry, I'm a terrible partner_  –

“You're a big boy,” Steve answers with marked annoyance, because he’s right, it’s entirely not the point, but Tony’s good at laying down smoke screens to hide his failures.

“Natasha,” Tony says, “showed up, and the only thing that stopped her from snapping my neck was that Fury sent her to point me his way. I guess you stopped watching the feed when clothes started coming off, huh-”

“You should have called me,” Steve says, his voice tight and dark.

“You wouldn’t have come, anyway, I’m sure, I guess fucking someone else puts me solidly out of your jurisdiction –“

“So this is my fault, now,” Steve says.

Tony doesn’t even know how to address that. “That’s not what I said,” he manages.

“Did you contact Fury, then?” Steve says. “Or did you need a break first? I know how the world beats you down.”

“No,” Tony says, “no, I didn’t fucking call Fury, I came here to talk to you because I fucked up and I was going to have a drink first, but here you are -”

“I should just leave,” Steve says, and Tony’s chest feels tight, his throat is closing up, he can’t swallow.

“Steve, no,” he says, lunging, because Steve is turning away, “I don’t want this to be the end, no, no, _no_ , Steve, stop, _don't_ , please, I just made a mistake -” 

“You didn’t make a mistake,” Steve says, whirling back around and flinging Tony’s hand off his shoulder. “You knew exactly what you were doing.”

Tony wants to lie about that and doesn’t.

“Do you know why I stay with you?” says Steve.

“Please don’t,” Tony says, because he knows it’s already a concession. Steve doesn’t have to elaborate.

“I think,” Steve says quietly, “you take it for granted,” and his voice is impossibly measured. “I think sometimes you forget what it took to get us here.”

Tony finds himself reaching for the glass Steve’s put down. Steve watches him as he finishes the rest, and doesn’t try to stop him.

“I haven’t,” Tony says. “Forgotten.” His voice is almost lost to the hum of the air filtration and the engine rotations. “It wasn’t fair,” he says, “what – to do what I did, to go – elsewhere.”

“Do you know how much I love you?” Steve says, and then his face turns harsh and pained like he’s been struck. “I have betrayed people for you," Steve says. "I have gone back on everything," he spits, " _Everything_ , Tony, and you don’t give a rat's ass.”

Tony can’t tear his eyes away from Steve’s. It seems just as reasonable to flee as it does to pull Steve in by the collar of his too-tight shirt, to prove that what he’s saying is true, to lose himself in bruising kisses and the heat of Steve’s body. He wants it and fears it, Steve’s touch, harsh like the burn of alcohol on his throat and everywhere, all at once, inescapable and terrifying and intoxicating.

“I care,” Tony half-whispers, stepping around his desk to face Steve on his feet, to look squarely up into his face. “This has nothing to do with that, this was just–" Tony stops, because it sounds juvenile, even as the ghost of a thought in his head.

“I don’t know that it matters,” Steve says with muted fury in his eyes.

“It does,” Tony says. “I –“ He stops again, because how do you tell someone they aren’t what you thought they were? That you’re stupidly in love with them anyway, that you’ve fucked it all up for the sake of an experiment that didn’t even yield any useful results?

“You’ve changed,” he says finally, and there's more that he can't say, but that's the best he can do. 

Steve is perfectly still. “No,” he says, his voice hollow and dark. “It’s just that you’ve never seen me in a real war, Tony.”

“I miss how you were,” Tony admits, and it feels like it's being dragged from his throat, thin and pathetic and it’s not fair, he knows it’s not fair, he’s always asking too much. It’s how he’s always been, with Steve.

“Then _leave_ ,” Steve snarls. “Don’t drag me around with you.”

“I can’t,” Tony says desperately. “Steve, you know I can’t, I just – I wanted, I’m sorry, it was wrong. I can't ask – I shouldn’t ask you to be what you aren’t anymore. I was shitty, I'm a shitty person, I'm paranoid, I – told myself it was ok because Carol said something about you fucking Jessica Drew and I knew you weren’t but I told myself _what if_ , and.”

Something moves over Steve’s face, something terrible and awful and bad, and Tony has that feeling again, that he should be running instead of holding out for Steve to be something other than hopelessly angry with him.

Steve reaches his fingers out to touch Tony’s neck.

“You want it gentle?” Steve says, something strangled and awful in his voice, and Tony is a little horrified that Steve saw that bit. But Steve’s hands are distracting and more than a little threatening as they are, right now, perfectly positioned to take him down or force him to his knees, or.

“Want me to whisper sweet nothings in your ear?” Steve hisses, and curls his fingers around Tony’s throat, snakes his other arm down around the small of Tony’s back.

Tony is very, very still.

“That’s not what you need,” Steve says and the backs of Tony’s thighs are pressing up against the desk now, the gold clicks against the lacquered wood. “Everyone coddles you, Tony. Your whole life. Even now.”

“Steve,” Tony says, trying to derail him, because Steve is anger and muscle and Tony is tired.

“It’s not what either of us deserve.”

“Steve, just, I don’t,” Tony says wildly, because this sort of thing always leads to the other sort of thing, this crazy, out-of-hand power play. “Want, I don’t want-”

“You don’t?” Steve says, tracing Tony’s collarbone through his shirt with the tips of his fingers. “Really?” He undoes the first button and slides the hand on Tony’s back down, down, down. “Because you don’t seem to have any trouble fucking strangers like a two-dollar whore,” he breathes in Tony’s ear, and then they’re moving.

Tony loses his feet, because Steve has reached an arm around him and he’s pulling him along like he’s nothing. He scrabbles his legs around and tries to kick away, but he’s got no leverage, and Steve has always been strong than he has, and there’s nothing he can do. Steve is dragging him, and that’s the door, whooshing open, and Tony finds himself unceremoniously thrown onto his (their) bed, and it hurts, how he lands hard on his right hip.

 “I shouldn’t put up with you,” Steve says, climbing up after him, settling in between Tony’s legs, grinding up against Tony’s crotch, putting his hands on Tony’s hips. “You don’t respect me,” he says. “You don’t respect you, Tony.”

“That’s not true,” Tony says, hating how shaky his voice sounds, but he’s alarmed by how easily Steve can move him around, how willing he is to do it. His hands settle on Steve’s absurdly well-executed biceps. He pushes and it’s like throwing his weight against a brick wall. “Steve, please-”

“I’m still talking,” Steve snaps. “You think I’m cheating on you?”

Tony opens his mouth to throw out some inadequate response and it’s all the time Steve needs to slip his thumb inside.

“Look at yourself,” Steve says viciously, cradling his head with his one hand, forcing Tony to look at him. “I'm the problem?” Steve says, pressing further into Tony’s mouth. “You’re the one who can’t keep your cock in your pants, Tony.”

Tony doesn’t say anything.

“This is the part where you try and defend your sorry ass,” Steve says. “Speak up, Tony,” and his broad fingers are tickling at the back of Tony’s throat. “I can’t hear you.”

“Nnnnph,” Tony says, trying to keep himself from gagging, and Steve smiles a wicked grin, because Tony is responding to his touch, shivering at the feeling of Steve’s breath hot on his ear.

His traitorous fucking body.

“You don’t need to say anything,” Steve decides. “I know what you mean,” he whispers.

Tony tries to pull his head away, but Steve holds him down against the mattress with the weight of his body. His breathing, he realizes, is hitched and shallow, and Steve must notice that, too, because he presses a firm knee between Tony’s thighs, leans a little more into him. It’s friction he doesn’t care for, because he’s hard and he shouldn’t be, but Steve is –

Steve is hard, too.

“Stop fighting me,” Steve says, as Tony tries to pull himself up, kicks, tries to extricate himself from Steve’s grasp. Tony is sure his eyes are watering by now, but he hold’s Steve’s gaze, his eyes gone glassy and disarmingly cruel. “Take this off,” he says roughly, running the flat of his palm up Tony’s stomach.

Tony thinks about biting and punches he could throw, and a thousand petty things he could say to Steve, but. Steve can so easily overpower him it’s not worth arguing about. He doesn’t have the energy for a fight right now, sex is – easier.

He makes the undersheath go away.

Steve pulls his fingers out, and Tony lets him bite at his bottom lip, mouth at his swollen jaw, reinforce the bruises on his neck. Steve pulls away, and he looks flushed and dazzled and so certain he’s going to get what he wants (he will). He yanks Tony’s head to the side by his hair, and Tony gives, dull eyed, blinking stupidly up at him. He cups Tony’s face in one of his massive hands and tilts his chin up.

“Undress me,” he says, putting Tony’s hands on his shirt, and Tony gets it, this is – how they slip into it, how Steve falls into his role and Tony into his.

Quietly. Without resistance.

He wrenches Steve’s shirt over his head, pauses to press kisses to his thick neck – bruised as his lips are, he does try – and down his chest, to close his mouth around one of Steve’s nipples. It’s rare that he gets to do this, he realizes, it’s so quick, so often, so quick and angry and rough and it’s always Steve that gets to do the feeling.

Steve seems to be satisfied, and he runs his fingers through Tony’s hair like he’s pleased before pushing him back down onto the bed and going for his boxer-briefs.

Tony puts a hand over his before he gets too far. “Steve,” he says, “You don't want - I don’t need – you shouldn’t, not after, just.”

Steve wrenches them down his legs anyway and flings them into the corner of the room by the window.

“Ok,” Tony says. “Can we – I’ll blow you,” he offers, because he doesn’t think he can bear the thought of Steve fucking him right now, after what he’s done, after the last few times. “Ngh, Steve,” he says, because Steve has just wrapped a hand around his cock, “I don’t,” but the rest loses itself in Steve’s mouth. 

“No, stop talking,” Steve says when he pulls away, and then he’s moving down over Tony’s body, running his hands down Tony’s arms and stopping when they’re firmly around Tony’s wrists, and he’s closing his mouth over Tony’s cock.

Tony lets out an embarrassing little whimper because this is the last fucking thing he was expecting, but Steve is there, kneeling between his legs, still in his sweatpants, his cheeks hollowed obscenely, and Tony gets over his useless shock and throws his head back in the pillows, because this is entirely more than he was expecting, and he wishes he understood, and it feels so fucking good -

Steve pushes his legs back so he can get his arms under Tony’s thighs and back around his wrists. Tony tests his grasp and finds, predictably, he can’t move an inch, but it’s ok, because Steve is going down on him, and it’s warmth and heat and so, so slick and Steve’s tongue-

Steve pulls off, briefly. “Stop squirming,” he says, squeezing Tony’s wrists hard enough to bruise, but it’s ok, because he’s doing this for Tony, and Tony goes still, fists his hands in the sheets.

“Oh, fuck,” Tony says, when Steve dips his head down again. “Steve,  _oh_ ,” and he's gasping a little, because Steve is doing something with suction and a hint of teeth just underneath the head and oh, god, why don’t they do this all the time? Tony wants to run his fingers into Steve’s head, pull on his hair, just – feel that he’s there, that this is really happening, that it’s not an awful dream that’s going to keep him up for the next few nights, but his wrists are still pinned and he’s not going to fight.

“Did you get him to do this to you,” Steve says, coming up for air, and there’s something mean in his voice, but Tony can’t care about that because Christ, Steve’s mouth.

Steve lets his wrists go and brings a hand up to Tony’s slick, slick skin and runs the pad of his thumb over Tony’s slit. Tony feels himself jump in Steve’s hand, and it’s so deliberately teasing Tony is ready to claw his hair out. “Steve, ah, more,” Tony says, trying to thrust into his hand, but Steve presses on his hip, holds him down so he can't. 

“Did you scream?” Steve says, working his fingers around, playing with the glans now.

His nails catch and Tony winces. “Ow, Steve – ah, that’s - yeah, that's good-“

“Did you like it?” he’s saying, and his voice is different, vicious, “did you cry?” He squeezes so hard his nails dig in and Tony winces.

“No,” Tony says, gasping, in pain or pleasure, he’s not sure, “It was nothing,” he says, “it was nothing, ah, Steve-“ And he’s jerking Tony brutally now, he’s pulling at the delicate skin around the head, there’s too much friction and not enough wet, it hurts.  Tony is ready to knee him away, because it’s too much and not nearly enough and so brutal and he hates that he’s getting off on this and then Steve fucking lowers his mouth and starts to suck him again –

Tony whimpers, and Steve reaches up to twist one of his nipples. Tony covers his eyes with his hands, and he’s making these sounds, he realizes, he’s so fucking close, he’s so very close, oh, god, he’s going to come in Steve’s mouth and Steve is going to hate it, he’s probably going to feed it back to him –

And then Steve pulls off and shoves him so he rolls off the bed.

Tony lands hard on his hip, cracks his head against the nightstand. “Ow,” he gasps from an undignified pile on the floor, his cock still leaking and slick and painfully hard. “Steve, what,  _fuck_.”

“If it was nothing, you wouldn’t have done it." He fists a hand firmly in Tony’s hair and drags him up to his knees.

“Ow,” Tony says, closing his hands on Steve’s arm. “Steve, calm down,” Tony says, and the feeds are showing him how his heart rate is climbing, “Steve, just -”

“Calm me down," Steve snarls back, reaching behind Tony and feeling for something in the drawer. “What makes him so  _special_ ,” he hisses, and he dangles a pair of thick restraints in front of Tony’s face.

Nothing that’s good is ever real, Tony decides.

Tony wants to say  _please_  and  _don’t_. He should, but he doesn’t, he just blinks stupidly up at Steve, his heart pounding in his chest, and he wants to sink into the floor.

He wonders when this became a habit.

“Put these on,” Steve says. Tony doesn’t move, because maybe if he just goes silent, Steve will back off, he’ll take it as a no –

“Steve,” Tony says, looking around wildly as if someone will appear to intervene on his behalf, “Come on, I’m – happy to do it, I don't need -”

“If you don’t, I will,” Steve says flatly.

This was always going to be an exercise in punishment.

Tony takes the cuffs and blinks furiously (please, don't let him cry, not right now) and goes to strap the first one around his left wrist. He’s about to do up his right when Steve tilts his chin up roughly, and he feels a muscle in his neck pull at the sudden violence of it.

“Behind your back, Tony,” Steve says.

Tony moves his arms terribly slowly, and why can’t he just do it right, he knows he’s not going fast enough for Steve, but it’s awful and he hates being restrained and Steve fucking knows it, and this was the worst fucking idea, he should never have come back, he should have gone to the lab to help Reed. Steve slaps him, and there’s nothing he can do about it but recoil, his whole face stinging from the force of it, fisting his hands uselessly behind him, his knees pressed into the fibers of the rug.

“Steve,” Tony says, wishing he was back up on the bed and in Steve's mouth, wishing he hadn't fucked everything up for the sake of some hour-long assignation.

Steve doesn’t smile.

“Ask nicely,” he says viciously.

Tony swallows, because he fucking hates this part. “I’m asking,” he says. “Please.” It comes out as barely more than a whisper.

“Do better,” Steve says.

Tony hears himself saying things. That he wants to be used, that he wants to be made. He thinks it’s what Steve wants to hear from him, because there’s a right way to do this, there’s a right way to be, on his knees, letting Steve call the shots, letting him –

Steve is fucking into his mouth, then, before Tony even knows what’s happening, and there’s nothing Tony can even do to slow him down, without his hands. He’s ridiculously hard already, and it’s hard to take all of him, but he does, because Steve grips around the back of Tony’s head, grips his chin with powerful fingers, pulls him all the way down, stretches his lips obscenely.

Tony closes his eyes and puts all his energy into not gagging.

“We’re not gentle men,” Steve says, canting his hips. “We fight, Tony, that’s what we do. Making love doesn’t suit us.”

Tony works his tongue harder.

“See,” Steve says, tangling his fingers in Tony’s hair. “It’s better like this. I know you feel better on your knees.”

Tony feels like he’s falling, but there’s the sharp spike of pleasure building, seeping through his torso, warm in his groin. He’s already forgotten what he’s supposed to be sorry for, but he’s got enough sins that it’s easy to substitute, so he stops struggling and makes his jaw loose and pliant and closes his eyes. His world narrows to what he does with his tongue, to keeping his teeth out of the way, to Steve's fingers against his scalp.

“I think we’re ready,” Steve says, after a few minutes, and he’s pulling out of Tony’s mouth, he’s dragging him up with a hand too tight around his upper arm. Tony trips getting up, his cock hard and heavy between his legs, but it doesn’t matter because Steve is pressing his back into the wall next to the window and suddenly he doesn’t have to support his own weight anymore.

“Did he fuck you?” Steve says, sounding genuinely interested, reaching two fingers around for Tony’s ass, and Tony’s hands are crushed painfully against the wall. He’s not sure if it’s more dangerous to respond or evade. “I thought you’d be slicker,” Steve says, feeling around, his cock pressing painfully against Tony’s hip.

“I showered,” Tony croaks.

“Yeah, you're still loose,” Steve says, coating his fingers with lube and pressing in – “You don’t really care who’s giving it to you, do you.” He shoves in two to start, and it’s really not fair how much Steve can make that hurt, and Tony whimpers and flexes his wrists in their sturdy restraints. “As long as you get it,” Steve whispers. 

“Must you?” Tony half-whispers, already knowing the answer.

“I didn’t start this,” Steve whispers back, lifting Tony up so his shoulders are pressed against the wall.

There’s nothing, nothing but bright panic firing in his head, and then Steve is pressing inside him. It’s rawness and pain, and Steve’s fingers crawl into Tony’s body and hook there like a porcupine’s quills, and Tony finds himself drowning in feeling he shouldn't want,deaf to everything but the slide of Steve’s skin and the touch of his hands.

Steve thrusts, supports Tony’s weight with his hands and the press of his body, plunges in and out and back again with all his weight behind it, slow and deep to the hilt, and it hurts it hurts it hurts -

Stop thinking, Tony.

“You're crying,” Steve says absently, and Tony realizes dimly that he is, desperate, filthy tears. Steve pinches one of Tony’s nipples, presses himself into Tony’s body, into his secret places that aren’t secret anymore, into everything he has left. "It's stunning," Steve whispers, like it's a secret that only Tony deserves to know. 

“I’m not crying,” Tony grits out, and Steve laughs.

“We'll get there,” he says, and redoubles his efforts.

“That wasn’t -” Tony says, “slower, Steve, just – aah.”

“I’m surprised you - mm - haven’t come from this,” Steve says between breaths. “You - _ngh_ \- beg for this all the time, it shouldn't take much.”

“Steve,” Tony says, “please, AH, OW, Steve- ”

“What’s wrong?” Steve says, panting, his eyes wild with lust. “You can take it, Tony.”

“Nnng,” Tony whimpers, wide-eyed, but it gets lost in Steve’s mouth, because Steve is kissing him savagely, and Tony’s body rocks every time he thrusts. He pistons in, hard and fast and rough, and Tony thinks vaguely that even if Steve let go of his ass, he’d still be pinned to the wall, that it's the fucking itself that's holding him up right now. But he’s raw, too tight and panicked and not stretched enough and he aches every time Steve buries himself in Tony’s body. It’s unmistakably cruel, the snap of his hips, the hot drag, and Tony scrabbles his fingers uselessly against the wall -

And then his head is splitting in two and his brain is awash in code he didn’t put there, and the pain is exquisite.

“Fuck,” Tony hears himself screaming, and he accidentally bashes his skull into the wall. “Ungh, Oh, bad, red. Red, _red_ , stop, Steve, STOP, safeword, this is me safewording out, fucking _stop_ , my head, something's wrong, shit, _STEVE_ -”

Steve isn’t stopping, he’s saying something, but Tony can’t hear what it is. He wonders if he’s speaking out loud at all, if Steve even heard him, because everything is light and pain and broken code. No, no no no no, he thinks, because someone is screaming, and he’s back in the cave, with Yinsen, he’s burning, there’s fire and bullets and blood, he smells it like it’s real, and there’s something wrong with his code, it’s wrong, it’s ruining him, he’s broken and Steve is still fucking into him-

Tony pitches forward with his head on Steve’s shoulder and passes out. 


	15. Things Fall Apart

**_KERNEL PANIC. Attempting to resolve. . ._ **

**_KERNEL PANIC. Attempting to resolve . . ._ **

**_Rebooting . . ._ **

_\- Director Stark, report –_

**PROXIMITY ALERT. MOUNT EREBUS OBSERVATORY REPORTING UNAUTHORIZED CRAFT** **77°31** **′** **47** **″** **S, 167°9** **′** **12** **″** **E, PLEASE ADVISE.**

 _\- No one even knows, uh, what their jurisdiction is anymore, they could be anywhere, Tom. Do they_ have _jurisdiction? This isn’t a pre-9/11 climate anymore, uh, we can’t expect them to shoulder the burden of paranormal threats AND domestic terrorism! That’s what we have a Department of Homeland Security for_ _–_

 **PROXIMITY ALERT. MOUNT EREBUS OBSERVATORY REPORTING UNAUTHORIZED CRAFT** **77°31** **′** **47** **″** **S, 167°9** **′** **12** **″** **E, PLEASE ADVISE.**

_– need more direction. Tony, where the fuck ARE YOU. Repeat, Ms. Marvel to Iron Man, come in –_

**PROXIMITY ALERT. MOUNT EREBUS OBSERVATORY REPORTING UNAUTHORIZED CRAFT** **77°31** **′** **47** **″** **S, 167°9** **′** **12** **″** **E, PLEASE ADVISE.**

_- **BEEEP** I can’t get into the tower, Tony, I called Jarvis and he said he was in but he isn’t. Look, I know we haven’t talked since – in a while, but you can’t just revoke my clearance like this, if you want me to handle your board meetings. Call me. Please – _

_\- - -_

 

Tony opens his eyes, and then he’s assaulted with data.

“Whuuh,” he groans.

It takes a minute, for things to resolve into shapes and textures instead of dark and light shadows, but it happens. He’s lying facing the window, and it’s snowing again, he can feel the draft on his bare skin.

Steve left him here, on the floor. He’s wearing boxer-briefs, now, at least. He tries to move and finds his hands are still cuffed behind his back, snug in their leather restraints.

Tony can’t actually decide if that’s better or worse than waking up in bed next to him after that.

He shifts up, tries to stand and fails miserably, a terrible spike of pain shooting up his spine. “Steve,” he says hoarsely, because he can’t be far away. No one answers, though. “Steve,” he tries again, louder, in case he’s in the kitchenette or out in the common area –

 _Locate Steve Rogers,_ he tries, and it’s a terrible idea, because he seizes up as blinding pain dances through his frontal lobe again. _“Fuck,_ fuck, fuck, fuck,” he mutters. That’s not right, that shouldn’t hurt, he’s not even trying to do anything, and the feeds are – fine, deafening, even.

He takes a deep breath and tries to activate the manual comm. It hurts marginally less, but still enough to double him over in pain.  “Maria,” he says, “What’s going on in Antarctica?”

“I’ve been paging you for 15 minutes, what the fuck happened,” she says, “We’ve got a Skrull ship crashed in the Savage Land, the people at the observatory are going ballistic –“ He can tell, his brain is alight with people clamoring for him. _Tony, Tony, Tony, tell us what to do._

“Hang on,” he says. “Carol?” he says weakly, switching channels, and he sucks in a breath as billions of pinpricks of pain burst in his grey matter again.

“Where the hell _are_ you,” she says, and there’s a lot of static. She must be flying. “Something’s going down in Antarctica, there’s a ship, Tony. I’m scrambling my team, thank fuck you’re back on comm, I need you to help me drive –“

“I know, you need to go, now,” Tony says, levering himself into a sitting position, panting in what he hopes are not audible gasps, “I’ll meet you there, you don’t need me to pilot, take the new Quinjet, I pretty much designed it for you, it’s on the helipad at the tower -”

“OK, but I’m spread a little thin here, give me Steve or someone, can I take Rhodey?”

“No, you can’t have Rhodey, I need him to – Carol, you’re fine, take the Quinjet and _go,_ take Jessica, Simon’s around, take Bob, call Natasha -“

“What about –“

“GO,” Tony says, “I’ll bring – Steve. Iron Man out.” He switches back to Maria.

“Carol’s going to Antarctica.” he says, “I’m gonna follow, I just – have to reboot first.”

“Tony,” Maria says, “are you ok?”

“Stark out,” Tony says, and then he falls over again, because he is so very not ok it boggles the mind. This is not what he needs, he does not want to go gallivanting off to the Savage Land, because whatever is on that ship, it’s nothing good, and he doesn’t think he could successfully fend off a dinosaur right now. He thinks maybe he’s bleeding again, his thighs feel sticky and wet, and _Steve didn’t stop_ –

He reboots and his mind goes mercifully blank for a moment.

His nose starts to bleed, but he ignores it while the lines of code scroll behind his eyes. There are cracks, breaks in his programming, tags that don’t belong. His whole body feels rusty, less than well oiled, like his limbs aren’t interfacing with his brain right. He senses it, though, the sequence slotting into place, his brain coming back online, and he thinks he should be relieved, but his fucking hands are shaking and his underwear is cold and damp and he feels like he should probably be in the hospital.

This has to wait, he thinks, but first he has to get out of this bullshit. Why isn’t he like Logan, he thinks, twisting his wrists experimentally, knives fucking _everywhere,_ Natasha would have a knife, she would have three knives and a bonesaw strapped to her thigh, but Tony is just a man pretending to be a Commodore 64, isn’t he -

The door rolls open and Steve strides in.

“What the fuck, Steve,” Tony says, because he wants an explanation and they have to go fuck off to Antarctica to save the day.

He’s wearing his full armor, the star shining on his chest. It’s the first time Tony’s seen him wear it, since – he died, and it changes him. _Mission-ready_ , Tony thinks, his stomach twisting. The shield is slung over his shoulder, and he looks so very proud crossing the room, he’s practically strutting with every red-booted strides.

He supposes Maria must have briefed him already, that he’s ready to head out, and that’s – that’s something, at least. It doesn’t explain why he’s left Tony bleeding and trussed, still, but it explains his absence.

Steve kneels down in front of him and Tony realizes he’s shrinking back into the wall like a cowering animal. He thumbs at Tony’s nose, and his glove comes away glistening with blood. “You’re not doing well,” he says, deeply amused, and Tony wants to throw him out the airlock.

“No,” Tony snaps, carefully metering his breathing. “I’m not fucking doing well, that was – _so_ not ok, that was really fucking –“ Tony sputters, because there are so many things that was, and some of them are punishable by law, and most of them are awful, and none of them adequately convey what he’s feeling – “inappropriate,” he decides on, and his voice shakes when he says it.

“Shh,” Steve says, wiping the blood on Tony’s bottom lip, and Tony wants to curl into a ball and crawl under the bed, or, alternately, kick Steve in the face, but it’s all mixed up and he’s tired and it’s _Steve_. “You’re ok,” he says appraisingly.

“You don’t just,” Tony says, and loses his voice, his nerve. He tries again. “You left me tied up,” he says, as if that’s the issue, and he’s not even mentioning the thousand and one other liberties Steve has taken, the way he blacked out and Steve hadn’t come yet, but now he’s damp and sticky and hurt -

“You were seizing,” Steve says. “I didn’t want to move you.”

“I’m not still seizing,” Tony says under his breath. “We’re not still having sex, we are not doing a scene, please get these off me,” as calmly as he knows how to speak, because he doesn’t need to give Steve a reason to be angry with him.

 “I know,” Steve’s voice whispers in his ear, “but they suit you.” Steve balances on his knees, and Tony wants to scream, when the tip of his boot nudges incidentally against his balls. But he reaches around to free him, and thank _god,_ Tony’s shoulders are wrenched back and his left arm is asleep.

“We’re going to have words, when we get back from Antarctica,” Tony says, trying to keep his voice steady. It’s not lost on him how ridiculous this is, that he’s trying to lecture Steve while he’s bound like this. “We’re going to have words because you need to _listen_ to me when we do that, something could have gone seriously wrong, why are you _smiling,_ what is WRONG with you,” he hisses.

“You’re such a hypocrite,” Steve says fondly, “it’s not like you weren’t enjoying it.”

“Did you _miss_ the bit where I passed out?” Tony snarls.

“Tony,” Steve says, and his voice is hardness and not at all permissive now. “You need to take a step back. You’re getting hysterical.”

“I’m not hysterical,” Tony says. “I – goddamn it, we do not have time for this, I have things to do, and so do you, so _fucking untie me_.”

“What was it you said?” Steve says, his hand hovering on Tony’s wrist, like he’s waiting for a reaction. “ _This is all I’m good for?”_ Tony turns his head away in something like shame, because this argument is not going to end with Steve’s tongue in his mouth, it’s _not_. “You shouldn’t say things you don’t mean, Tony,” he murmurs, thumbing open the buckle.

“That’s not the _point_ ,” Tony says bitterly, reaching his other arm around, the cuff still dangling from his wrist. He picks at it irritably until the strap slides free, then scrambles to his feet, quietly puts a few feet of distance between them. He reels a little, dizzy from the drop in blood pressure, and sleeping with Steve is decidedly the roughest fucking thing he does recreationally.

“Let’s just - get the job done,” he says wearily, looking at Steve’s feet instead of his eyes, “I’ll get my armor, we’ll talk about this later.”

Steve snorts. “You’re not going anywhere,” he says. “Look at you, you’re in no condition -”

“And whose fault is that,” Tony spits back. “I’m _going_ , we’ll take the second Quinjet. You know what, YOU take the Quinjet, I’m not spending two hours with you in a two-meter cockpit.” He looks around for his armor and realizes he left it in the airlock.

“Well,” Steve says, “This is problematic.”

“I don’t care,” Tony says, “I can’t be in the same space as you right now.”

“No,” Steve says. “That’s not what I meant. I thought we might run into this problem.”

“What problem,” Tony says, raising an arm to summon the plates.

“You know what they say,” Steve says, and Tony turns around, too slowly, just in time to see Steve’s face morph into a grin.

“All good things,” he whispers, and then he lands a blow to Tony’s chest, and he’s crumpling to the ground with a strangled yelp.

Tony gasps at the sudden violence of it, and he’s all bones and bruises and he can’t find his lungs. “Steve,” he wheezes, because that was cruel, and low, and he honestly can’t figure out what he’s done this time, usually it’s predictable and he can see it coming and it’s not the entirety of Steve’s fucking strength -

“We’re not going to the Savage Land, Tony.” Steve says, looking down at Tony where he’s lying on his back, sucking in desperate, harsh breaths like a gasping whale.

Tony looks up then, and everything falls away, the hum of the engines, his headache, the rush of blood in his ears. It’s astonishingly silent, and he wants to look away, but he _can’t_ , because Steve is _changing_ before his eyes. It’s horrifying and transfixing at the same time, the way there’s yellow creeping along his skin, darkening, filling out into a mottled green. He’s getting taller, if that’s even possible, his ears are growing out, lengthening into points. There are ridges forming on his chin, and his _face_ – it’s Steve’s, but it’s not Steve’s, it’s harsher and severe, the cheekbones just a little too high, the line of his jaw turned sinister and cruel.

“You’re an idiot,” the Skrull says in Steve’s voice.

Tony can't think -

Tony -

Tony -

Tony feels like he’s been shot.

The pain in his muscles and the bruises and the headache he’s been carrying for weeks and weeks seem like nothing, because he’s been screwing an alien spy, hasn’t he, he’s spread his legs and moaned like a whore and said I love you and trusted this creature and did horrible things and it was never Steve –

It was _never_ Steve -

He’s never kissed Steve –

Steve is _dead_ , and Tony’s been –

Tony’s been –

Tony retches.

“Disgusting,” not-Steve says, and he sounds almost bored. “You humans and your fluids.”

 _Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god,_ he thinks, _this is not fucking happening_. It’s a dream, it’s a hallucination, it’s not real, it can’t be, it’s not real, _it’s not real_. He heaves again, but there’s nothing to come up this time, it’s mechanical, the way it wracks his body and he pants for air in his lungs. Tony shakes and shakes because it’s not ending, he’s not waking up, that’s vomit on the floor -

Tony is no stranger to betrayal, but this, this isn’t the same. It’s like feeling the grief all over again from the first time, it’s Steve’s body on the table and it’s the way he’s given himself up part and parcel to this thing with Steve’s face, Steve’s _face_ and Steve’s eyes and his body and his traitorous, lying mouth. There’s shame and disgust twisting his insides and knowing that he could have seen it, he should have seen it, he’s such a fucking idiot –

Tony tries to summon the armor, but it won’t come, the link is gone, he’s malfunctioning again, except now there’s a Skrull with all of Steve’s strength towering over him, and he panics -

Tony kicks not-Steve in the balls with all his might. The Skrull hisses in pain, and Tony takes the opportunity to swing his leg out and knock him off his feet. It’s clumsily executed, but it’s the best he can do, and it’s enough, because the Skrull topples over, swearing at him, crawling to retrieve the shield.

That’s all the time he needs to bolt.

 

\- - -

 

Tony is running.

He tears through the hallways as best he can, because he’s still limping, really, and there’s sharp pain in his pelvis every time his feet hit. His nose is bleeding again, but there’s no time, there’s no time for any of it. “Give me your communicator,” he gasps, sprinting up to a bewildered grunt on his way to the hangar bay, wrenching his hands up into the kid’s collar, and then it’s pressed into his hand.

“Tony Stark to all points,” he pants, already on his way again, “Level 7 Alert, put us in the water, now, send all decked squadrons out, Maria, report–“

“I’m here, Tony –“

“Steve is a Skrull,” he says, “Steve is a fucking Skrull, you need to –“

And then the Helicarrier rocks with a deafening boom, and the floor is tilting and shuddering beneath his feet, and Tony is thrown off his feet.

**_\- SECTIONS 9, 11, and 13 reporting hull breaches, fires on decks A, B, F, G –_ **

He feels blood trickling down his forehead.

 _\- This is 42 calling for assistance, we’ve just been hit, the perimeter has been breached, please advise_ **–**

Tony is pulling himself up again when the ship lurches again. “Maria,” he says, “come in,” but there’s only static on her end. “DAMMIT,” Tony says, and there’s smoke filling up the hallway, choking him, the acrid stench of titanium melt and phosphorus in the air. He can’t stay here, because not-Steve is going to find him if he stops -

\- **_ENGINE FAILURE, turbines 1 and 3, ENGINEERING, REPORT –_**

 **_-_ ** _Reporting live from Manhattan now, where a giant explosion has just rocked the Baxter building –_

_-  Yes, we’ve been breached, do you copy, requesting a response team to the Raft immediately –_

_\- Ms. Marvel to Iron Man, what the fuck is happening, are you en route? The Helicarrier was just hit –_

He ducks into a side hallway. If he’s remembering correctly – it’s a miracle he’s thinking, he has to think about blueprints, about design and layout, maps and directions, not – not _him_ , not what he’s done, _God, what he’s done_ – there’s a maintenance shaft that spans the next two decks.

He stops at the hatch. There are people running everywhere, everyone is mobilizing, everyone is rushing to make this ship go, but it isn’t going to matter, there’s smoke filling up the hallway, he can feel the drop in altitude. He smells blood, more than just his own, the caustic smoke that comes from chemical fires. His hands are shaking as he presses a palm to the keypad, but it beeps red, even when he blindly punches in his emergency override code.

Steve, not-Steve must have revoked his security clearance.

_\- S.W.O.R.D. requires assistance, Director Stark, do you copy –_

_\- We’ve got Skrulls on decks A-F, we need a containment plan -_

This is so much worse than he’d anticipated.

He swears and swipes sloppily at the blood on his face, at the tears that are ruining his vision, _think,_ Tony, _think –_

He has to warn them, Carol is walking into a trap, and Steve knew all along, and it’s his fault, because he could have been paying attention to this instead of sobbing into his pillow at night -

\- STARKTECH SATELLITE NETWORK COMPROMISED, MALWARE DETECTED -

Tony rips the panel off the wall. The metal tears at his fingertips a bit, but he can’t even feel it. He reaches at the circuitry, the wires slippery under his fingers, and he has to move faster, because not-Steve is looking for him right now, and oh, fuck, that’s automatic weapons fire behind him –

The hatch light blinks green and Tony slips inside, so very grateful.

He wedges himself up inside the maintenance hatch. There’s no way _Steve_ would know to look for him here unless he’s studied the plans himself, but Tony can block him out, at least temporarily, he can do that, he’s – he’s clever, he’s smart, he plans for these sorts of things –

He never planned for this.

He fiddles with the comm unit until he’s broadcasting on the emergency override. “All personnel, abandon ship,” he says, and then he’s digging into the emergency console in the wall and trying to remember how to use manual interfaces so he can initialize the self-destruct sequence, because he’ll be damned if the Skrulls are getting an aircraft carrier, and he might just take out not-Steve if he’s lucky –

ALIEN VIRUS DETECTED – his tiny screen chirps, once.

Then the lights go out, and the screen darkens, and Tony is left alone in the dark.

**_ALIEN VIRUS DETECTED. FIREWALL ERROR, ports 9804, 09834, 2314. . ._ **

And then he’s breaking apart, howling in surprise and pain, writhing on the floor.

He’s seizing, his limbs are moving and there’s malicious code eating him up and he can’t move, he can’t run away, it’s _in_ him, all of his neurons are firing at once and he doesn’t understand anything. Rhodey’s voice is screaming in his ear, and Carol is somewhere calling his name, and he can’t answer either of them, there’s only pain and the certainty that he’s very, very alone, and he crumples onto the floor and pukes because his brain is on fire, his entire body is an open port, an open wound (is there a difference?) and he can’t breathe around the bile rising in his throat –

**_ALIEN VIRUS DETECTED, Attempting to resolve . . ._ **

He barely registers the hatch opening, and then he’s being dragged out by the ankles, red gloves clasped tight around his bare legs.

**_FIRMWARE ERROR, Attempting to resolve . . ._ **

“Found you,” Steve’s voice says.

 

\- - -

 

**_FATAL FIRMWARE ERROR, Unable to resolve . . ._ **

**_Rebooting . . ._ **

**_Rebooting . . ._ **

**_Rebooting . . ._ **

**_Rebooting . . ._ **

He’s limp, and shuddering, alternately, slung over not-Steve’s shoulder. He thinks they’re moving, because there’s sound bending and changing around him. He can’t see anything, but something explodes near his head, and he scrabbles his arms uselessly against the scale and then he’s vomiting blood again –

**_UNHANDLED KERNEL EXCEPTION kw0888943 from fa0009843 . . ._ **

Someone screams, and Tony can’t tell if it’s him or not.

**_SYSTEM FAILURE . . ._ **

There’s a twang, near his cheek, bullets, bouncing off the shield. He wants to say something, but he feels so sick and he secretly hopes that one of them will catch him, so he clutches at the curve of the rim, because it’s Steve’s, Steve touched it once, Steve would know what to do –

**_SYSTEM FAILURE . . ._ **

He’s being shoved into a chair, and arranged, then, there’s cold metal being fitted to his hot skin, around his wrists, on his ankles, and then he’s being scooped up again -

**_SYSTEM FAILURE . . ._ **

The angle changes, and he’s being carried up a ramp, limp and useless, and the smoke smell is gone, it’s different, sterile, cool metal and leather. He’s dumped on the ground, in front of a stainless steel toilet basin, and he’s never been so grateful in his entire miserable life. His body spasms again and the taste is overwhelmingly copper this time –

 **_xú‹ºTY∂ >^∏Ñ`¡›‹)¡-∏$Xp∑`A ÖCp-Ç{p∑Ö‹›ù?›”of_ ** **_ﬁ_ ** **_ÃÙÙÙ»{ÔˇªÎ[ãª∏˜ÿ_ ** **_ﬁﬂﬁ_ ** **_gÔsœ©áÈáE¶¨§å$ÊÒbÅa‑f‚Ã'hËh®òËO±±0ü0‡_ ** **_·_ ** **_∞S”í2pÒsÚÒäJÎ)äæ“î‡Â{m•¨˘Ê≠©ô©àÇùõ≠â´_ ** **_ﬁ_ ** **_;S„áV¿d4_ **

“Guh,” he gasps, trying desperately to pull himself up, but his muscles are putty and the dizziness blacks out his vision for a minute and he’s not equipped for this, he’s not a hero anymore -

**_HE LOVES YOU_ **

And then there’s nothing in his brain. No feeds. No transmissions. Static.

Tony has the vaguest sense that something is replicating in his system, he imagines virus particles low in his cerebellum. He’s soaked in sweat, his knees are sliding along the floor, and he’s shivering, because it’s cold and he’s not wearing a damn thing, and this is really fucking bad –

He clings to the toilet bowl for dear life and for a while, it’s all he needs, the cool metal pressed against his forehead.

He lets himself pass out.

 

\- - -

 

“About damn time,” comes Steve’s voice, and Tony is being hauled roughly to his feet. He’s disgusting, he can feel there’s spit dripping from his chin, and he glimpses the toilet bowl, filled with something deep, deep red –

“Nuh,” Tony slurs, struggling to understand where he is, confused by the lack of noise in his mind. “No, whuh – what’d you do to me?”

He’s being settled in the co-pilot’s seat, he realizes dimly, and he can see grey water stretching out beneath them through the snow-dusted plexiglass on the dash. They’re flying, but he’s blind without his servers, he has no idea where they are or where they’re going without a GPS lock.

“Drink this,” he says, thrusting a metal bottle at Tony. Tony looks at it perspiring in his trembling, shackled hands for a minute before he throws it at not-Steve’s head with poor aim. He snatches it effortlessly out of the air, and then shoves it into Tony’s hands again.

“Drink,” he says, “or I’ll force it down your throat."

Tony drinks it, and he hopes it’s poison.

It’s not, of course, not with his luck. It doesn’t taste like anything, but his head clears a little, the ache dies away to something not unlike a mild high, spinning and tingling and warm in the base of his skull. His throat clears a little, and the internal burning he’s been feeling all but vanishes. He’s still trembling violently, and his skin is damp with chilly sweat, but now it’s just his other injuries that bother him most, the accumulated hurts and finger-shaped bruises.

Tony can see him better now, the not-Steve. He’s still got Steve’s blue eyes, and his tawny hair, striking and terribly, terribly wrong against his green skin. He grins, and his teeth have been filed into points.

That’s about right, Tony thinks.

“Are you lucid?” the Skrull says.

“Fuck you,” Tony spits.

“Good enough,” the Skrull says. The bottle is snatched away, then, and then he’s being hauled out of the padded seat and buckled him into the bench further back. He swings weakly with a fist, with a burnt elbow, but it’s like hitting concrete, and not-Steve is already doing his chains up and bolting them firmly into the wall.

He looks down at Tony consideringly for a moment, and then runs a hand through his hair.

Tony bucks and kicks out, but the Skrull just dances nimbly out of the way. “I’m going to kill you,” Tony spits, and he can feel the blood flecking on his chin.

“I doubt it,” the Skrull scoffs, and then he’s stuffing a leather gag into Tony’s mouth and buckling it behind his head. He sits in the pilot’s seat, apparently satisfied with his work, and straps himself in. “You haven’t been in top form for months,” not-Steve continues, reaching for a switch above his head.

He’s bringing them into a descent, Tony realizes, and sure enough, there are trees visible, they’re coming down on a beach somewhere, and not-Steve points them out facing the ocean and kills the engine. Tony looks down at his hands, at the chains he designed to hold Steve. He needs to _do_ something, he needs to get out of this, Reed and Carol and Maria and all of his men are counting on him, and he’s gone, he’s _nothing_.

Tony is just Tony now, and he’s so very small without his mind.

“Pay attention,” the Skrull says, kicking him, and Tony looks up and glares. “We’re going to be here until your forces are defeated and we secure New York,” he says, leaning forward a little, running a hand through his hair, and _god,_ that’s just like Steve did it.

“My name is K’arr’n,” he says, “You won't be using it. You’re a prisoner of war. I’d introduce myself, but we’ve already known each other, haven’t we.” His face curls into a smirk, and Tony shivers involuntarily under his cruel, cruel stare.

Something streaks through the sky, and Tony blinks, but his vision is worse than he’s used to, without Extremis to dilate his pupils just so. He’s realizes he has absolutely no idea how he used to function like this, as a normal person.

That was another life.

There’s an explosion high above the horizon line. Something enormous, and Tony prays it’s not the Helicarrier.

“You’re infected with a virus,” K’arr’n says. “It’s meant to interface with the pulse you so foolishly let slip by your security protocols a month ago. That trojan,” he says, kicking his feet up onto the console, “was designed to systematically break down the functionality of your precious Extremis. It’s why you’ve been getting migraines and bleeding all over my sheets and collapsing,” he says, leaning forward a little in his chair, like he’s enjoying this immensely. “Think of it as a slow hack. Breaking your firewalls down over months.”

Tony doesn’t dare correct him.

“Right now,” he says, glancing out the dashboard, “the virus is wrecking your carefully-engineered code. Every electronic device that uses your technology, every computer on _earth_ that uses Starktech is corrupting its own programming right now, including that clever brain of yours.”

That’s why the satellites are down. That’s why the Helicarrier fell out of the sky, that’s why - Tony tries to go over it mentally, but it’s all – everything, the Helicarrier, Stark Tower, the network, the _military’s defense systems_ –

It’s all on him.

K’arr’n’s communicator chirps, but it must not be important, because he tosses it on the dash.

“I’m surprised,” he continues, “You’re reputably amongst the most intelligent of your species. I was expecting you to figure it out. I was _craving_ the challenge, I suppose, after all the preparation I did. I worried – very briefly, mind you – that I was out of character in the beginning. But then it didn’t _matter_ , you’re so eager to overlook the faults of the people you love as long as they keep loving you. I could have done _anything_ to you. You'd have come crawling back for more.”

Tony bites at the side of his tongue hard enough to taste blood, because he knows.

“You need to understand something,” K’arr’n says reasonably. “Your Captain was a man of war. Have you any idea the things he’s done? He was no hero. And you - _Avengers_ treated him like he could do no wrong.”

“But your war,” he continues, his eyes boring into Tony’s, “that was the natural progression of your relationship. No one can be perfect all the time, Tony. _Everyone_ can do wrong. Even your Captain. Your relationship wasn’t salvageable. I know, I have all his memories. He truly wanted to kill you, at the end. He would have.”

Tony flinches at the use of the past tense.

“Oh,” K’arr’n says. “He’s very dead, don’t worry. He died on the courthouse steps, Tony. I'm all that's left of him, now. Schmidt was trying to bring him back – clumsily, granted – but they were able to insert me before they could manage it.”

He lunges forward to grab Tony by the hair, and Tony whimpers into the gag.

“Do you have any idea how unpleasant it was to take out an entire Hydra facility with no armor just to put on a good show for you?” he hisses, and Tony blinks, wide-eyed, terrified of where his anger is going to go.

He lets go, and Tony’s heartbeat rushes in his ears. The sky lights up, by the horizon, and two more burning somethings rocket down. One of them lands a few miles away, in the water, it looks like, and the smoke billows up in a spiraling black cloud.

Tony wonders what Carol found in the Savage land. He wonders if it matters. They’re – nothing, they’re scattered. There is no team to meet this threat.

He's seen to that.

“It _was_ your fault,” K’arr’n whispers conspiratorially, as he watches Tony watch the planes dodging green laser arrays. He laughs to himself, and it rankles Tony’s blood. “It was so easy,” he says, fiddling idly with the control stick. “You played into my hands from the beginning. You just _let_ it happen.”

Tony is painfully aware of what he’s done.

“Would you like to know something?”

He wouldn’t, but K’arr’n leans in, still smelling remarkably human, shampoo and sex and gunmetal.

“I didn’t have to do it this way. My assignment was to ruin you, but my… _commanding officer_ …” - his voice curls around the word like it’s something unpleasant – “left the particulars up to me. You just lend yourself to torment so _readily_.”

Tony can see the impossibly bright blue of his eyes, and it’s physically painful, to look at them and know they should belong to Steve and _don't._

“I didn’t have to humiliate you,” K’arr’n says, running a thumb over Tony’s cheek. “But I did enjoy it.”

Tony squeezes his eyes shut, but he can feel hot tears tracking down his face. 


	16. Complications of the Flesh

“Wake up.”

Tony wakes from a terrible sleep to K’arr’n kicking him in the shins.

"You're missing it,” he says, and he sends the news up onto the bigger screen over the Quinjet’s control paneling. There’s no timestamp on the broadcast, but the sky is marginally darker than it was, and the sun is hanging low over the horizon. He’s been out for a while, then, but it’s probably lucky. He’s not sure when he’ll get to sleep next.

K’arr’n fiddles with the channel.

_“ - the National Guard, but they are barely hanging on, Jim, as you can see behind me – oh, god, what was that – all transportation on or off the island has been cut off, and the military is urging civilians to stay inside their homes or report to the nearest evacuation center -”_

A blond reporter clutches the mic wire in her hands and looks, terrified, over her shoulder, and then the feed cuts to static just as her mouth warps into a scream -

Shaky handheld footage of Times Square, and the screens are fallen and cracked, is that – _Rhodey,_ Tony thinks with a leap of his heart, and thank _god,_ he must have gotten the automated message when Tony went offline. He looks ok, he’s still in one piece, scrambling onto the wreckage, but then there’s an explosion and he’s _buried_ under twisted metal and broken glass -

“ _– no word from the White House after the explosion that rocked the Capitol almost an hour ago, now –“_

Bird’s-eye view of a city – Manhattan, Tony thinks with a jolt, laid to siege. The skyline doesn’t stand a chance –

_“ – massive destruction in Manhattan, this footage was taken by the brave men and women in the chopper!10 and streamed to us live before it crashed –“_

“ – zzzt – someone, come in, Tony, Steve, Maria, someone fucking come in–”

“Carol, thank god,” K’arr’n answers, muting the news, and Tony is fucking _done_.

He screams, as if Carol can hear him, as if his mouth isn’t filled with leather, but it’s not even worth it. He’s rewarded with a swift and painful boot to the stomach, and it occurs to him, as he wheezes, that K’arr’n has all of Steve’s physical strength and infinitely more of his capacity for cruelty.

Just his luck.

“Where are you,” Carol’s voice comes, but it’s muffled and a little distorted. “We – we needed you, it’s bad here, Steve, they’re _us,_ Peter’s been _shot_ and he’s bleeding bad, we need more firepower, Natasha got killed by her own double –”

And it’s only because Tony happens to be glaring K’arr’n’s way that he notices it - K’arr’n _hesitates_ for what can’t be more than a fraction of a second, and then there’s a palpable easing of the tension in his broad green shoulders as he presses the button to respond. 

She _knew_. Natasha knew.

She knew and she didn’t tell him.

“It’s just as bad here,” he answers, and then there’s grief creeping into his voice. “The Helicarrier was hit, we’ve got Skrulls everywhere, you need to - just get back here, New York is the priority, and – and _Tony,_ ” he says, his voice hitching entirely too convincingly on his name, and it’s fucking disgusting -

“Oh my god,” Carol breathes, “Ok, we’re re-grouping, but our communications are all fucked up, there’s something about the magnetic poles that screws it up, it’s only now that I could get back to the Quinjet - ”

Tony loses the rest of it, because his head is spinning with useless rage. Carol can’t hear him and K’arr’n is a filthy liar and she’s going to walk into a coordinated ambush. And it’s so fucking unfair, because Natasha knew and she was so angry that she _kept_ it from him, and now she’s dead, and Carol doesn’t know. He could scream himself hoarse, but there K’arr’n is, spinning his lies, telling Carol that Tony is critically injured and might not make it, tears in his fucking Skrull eyes as he sells it over the comm.

K’arr’n cuts the line with a grin, and Tony strains so hard that he feels his shoulder pop.

“Careful,” K’arr’n says, with amusement he doesn’t bother masking, “You might hurt yourself.”

The explosions drag on, but there are decidedly fewer planes tumbling from the sky as it progresses. Tony has no idea how long they’ve been here, but the sky is getting dimmer and dimmer as the sun falls lower in the sky, and eventually, it’s only the glow of smoke and fire that light up the skirmishes.

The news broadcasts aren’t reassuring. K’arr’n absentmindedly flips from station to station – from boredom or sadism, Tony isn’t sure – and the only thing Tony gets, other than widespread and consistent disaster, is that this seems to be more than just a targeted attack on the Helicarrier and New York. They couldn’t contain Rykers, or the Raft, and there are apparently supervillains crawling out of the wreckage of the Baxter building, because the breach in 42 was irreparable. It’s on every continent, there’s talk of Moscow, Berlin, London, Tokyo, already lost, Switzerland is overrun -

K’arr’n twiddles the dial, and after a while, no one is airing coverage anymore.

Carol doesn’t call in again.

After a while, there are just squadrons and squadrons of Skrull ships crossing the sky from left to right, unchallenged.

This can’t be happening, he thinks desperately.

He shifts on the bench, shivers in the cool recirculated air, and desperately tries to fight his fatigue, because he needs to wait, there will be an opportunity, K’arr’n has to unchain him at some point, he’ll wait, he’ll escape, he will.

Steve would find a way out of this.

(Steve is dead.)

K’arr’n’s communicator beeps, and he answers it this time. Tony can’t hear it well from where he’s restrained, but it’s harsh and throaty, full of glottal stops and clicks and rough snarling sounds. Skrull, he assumes. K’arr’n says something in return, and then he’s striding back to Tony.

“Aren’t you in luck,” he says, kneeling before him with a syringe in hand.

Tony bucks and tries to scramble out of range, but there’s nowhere to go, and he just bruises his wrists and bashes his head into the bulkhead.

“Shh,” K’arr’n says, wrapping a hand around the back of Tony’s neck to still him. “Don’t go making trouble for me now, Tony, you’ve been so cooperative thus far.”

Tony hopes K’arr’n takes his wide-eyed terror for anger, but he’s having a difficult time focusing on anything but that needle –

“We’ll be home soon,” K’arr’n whispers into Tony’s ear, and then there’s a sting, and his face goes blurry, he’s all green and blond and blue, and why does this always happen to him–

 

\- - -

 

The light is entirely too much.

“No, I can’t,” a familiar voice snaps, “do you want him alive or not?”

Tony is really fucking sick of waking up with a headache.

“Yes, we’re ready. You need to clear the room. I have to make the final preparations.”

More clicking. Green shapes, moving around, talking to a smaller one, a white-coat. The room is starting to resolve itself into a place, instead of a vague conglomeration of colors and light – and it’s white, it’s all white, and there’s metal, oh fucking _Christ_ , his wrists are strapped down to the table he’s lying on -

“Tony?”

 Tony blinks, because this is all of the bad things.

“Maya,” he whispers, and it’s really her, looking older and more desperate, her hair falling into her face.

“Yeah,” she says under her breath, her voice clipped, strained. “You need to whisper.” She moves her hands over his skin, and he’s all tied down, leather straps and buckles –

“Thank fucking Christ, you gotta help me, there are Skrulls,” he says, and the fog is lifting, everything is distilled to this narrowly closing window of opportunity. He has to fix this, New York, he has to get to New York - 

“I know there are Skrulls,” she says tiredly. And she’s wearing a labcoat, and Tony is very clearly strapped into some kind of huge apparatus, he can’t turn his head, there’s a tube taped in his nose, he realizes, and what the fuck _is this_ –

“What are you doing to me,” he says.

“They’re going to let me go,” she says, “if I do this,” she says, bending to the computer monitor for a retina scan. And then Tony realizes where he is, this is a lab in one of the sub-basements, he’s home in the tower, and this is, there are Skrulls in his tower, that’s –

There are Skrulls in the tower.

“Did they win,” he says, so very quietly.

“Yes,” she says. “They’re winning, Tony.”

“Let me go.”

She looks at him impassively, and instead of undoing his straps, she checks the monitor next to him. “This will be over soon,” she says.

“What will,” he says, not wanting to know the answer.

“I’m going to give you something,” she says, “Extremis is broken.“

“I know, Maya, I can _do something_ if you fix it -”

“I know,” she hisses suddenly, and Tony bites his tongue. She’s raising his eyelids one at a time, pretending – or not, Tony isn’t sure – to check his pupil dilation. “I’ve seen all your brain scans, I've been watching you fall apart for months.  _They've_ been watching. But it's beyond both of us now. There's nothing I can do.”

"You were - you knew this was going to happen to me?" Tony says, and he wonders how long ago they got to her. "It was awful," he says quietly,  “I was seeing awful shit, Maya, it was – you don’t even know.”

“I do know,” she says, casting a wary glance behind him. “It was – that was the point. Draw on your subconscious. Make you – hurt you.” It’s almost a whisper, and her eyes are hard and distant, and she’s very pointedly not looking at him. “I don’t think they ever meant it to go further than that, that was supposed to make you useless enough, but now they need you for something,” she says, and she’s inserting an IV into his right hand.

“Maya, no, don’t do this,” Tony says, and he might be pleading. He doesn’t know what _this_ is, but he’s sure it will be something horrible, the last time he let Maya do shit like this he ended up in a scab cocoon for 36 hours.

“They want you alive, Tony,” she says. “Do you know what that means? Even with the enhancile corrupted, you still – you heal too quickly.”

He has some idea of where that means.

“They’re not going to let you go,” he croaks. This is – bad, this is so very very bad -

“I know,” she murmurs, flicking a syringe.

“Then _why,_ ” he says, “if you just, I can fix this –“

“You can’t,” she says simply. “I don't know if you'll survive this. The projections didn't agree.”She slides the needle into an IV drip hanging next to him, and he can’t look away as she empties it into the port.

“Maya, _please_ -”

"It might be better if you don't," she says. "It's the best I can do."

“Maya,” he says desperately, and then he can’t say anything, because he loses control of his body.

It starts as a curious buzzing, like his atoms are all vibrating at the same time, and then it’s everywhere, pressure bordering on pain. Something is in him, something wants to claw its way out, and his bones _ache_ , his skin is on fire, and he thinks he might be screaming. His skin feels wet, he feels like he’s losing something, he feels it moving in his tendons, slithering out of his pores, running out of his nose, leaking out his mouth, and it’s excruciating, and he thrashes as Maya looks at him, so very sad –

And then it’s done, as sudden as it’s started.

He slumps there on the table, panting, and there’s something dripping from his skin, pooling between his skin and the table. He dares to look at the floor, and it’s shimmering gold, trickling out from under the table in shining rivulets.

Extremis, he realizes. That’s what was in his body, what he’s been carrying with him for months now, and it’s running away to the drain in the middle of the floor like refuse.

He tests this, he tries to call it up, the gold on his skin, but there’s nothing, no pain, just an empty ache in his bones, a silence where there should be untapped potential.

It’s gone.

Maya is watching, he realizes dimly, as two Skrulls rush forward to pull the tube from his nose, rip the IV from his hand, peel him off the table. They press him back into restraints and pull his arms behind his back. He’s still mostly naked, he sees, and the gold beads like oil and runs off his skin, away from the metal shackles on his ankles.

It’s gone, and there’s literally nothing he can do to alert – whoever’s left, like this. Nothing he can do to fight.

Blind.

They hustle him into the emergency decon shower, and the blast of freezing water brings a lucidity he doesn’t appreciate. They hose him down, leave him shivering and trembling and wet, and then it’s off into the elevator, and Tony drags his feet and makes his body as leaden as he can.

It isn’t going to make a damn bit of difference now, and he knows it.

 

\- - -

 

K’arr’n meets them at the top, and he’s still wearing Steve’s uniform, although the top few clasps on the scalemail are undone, loose and easy, and he’s lost the gloves and pushed the white undershirt up to his green elbows.

“Did you miss me?” K’arr’n says, leading roughly Tony through the kitchen and the common area, a green hand wrapped painfully around his upper arm. There aren’t any guards, Tony notices, and he wonders what that means, if they’re only guarding the entrances and exits, if they don’t feel it’s necessary on these upper levels.

“I have something to show you,” he croons, and Tony struggles and drags his feet, but they both know he’s the one at the disadvantage, weakened by blood loss and tranquilizers, unused to muscles that don’t respond faster than he can think them into movement.

Utterly ordinary.

Steve would be pleased, he thinks, his throat tightening up.

K’arr’n jabs the button for the balcony doors, and then they’re standing there in the snow, Tony barefoot and naked and shivering, K’arr’n’s filthy hands on his skin.

“Look,” K’arr’n says, and Tony looks, because there’s nothing else to do.

He should be commended, he thinks, because he doesn’t flinch, and it’s a fucking mess, really. There are ships he doesn’t recognize flying in formations, every now and then sending out volleys of green laser-based projectiles, but it’s just clean-up, he realizes. It would be easier to catalogue what _hasn’t_ been touched – there isn’t a block that doesn’t seem bombed-out or burning. Park is a mess, along with the rest of Manhattan. The Metlife building is half-collapsed, a hulking, smoking shell. There are bodies everywhere, fires happily lapping away at the debris. Cars, overturned, strewn all over the wide boulevard as if they weighed nothing at all. There are enormous sections of Midtown, eaten away, lost in giant black craters. 

The worst part of it, though, is that there’s no one fighting.

“They’re not much of a threat without effective leadership, are they,” K’arr’n says, as Tony looks in the direction of Central Park. Where, he sees with a faint pang of horror, something that looks a lot like the Quinjet has crashed into the ground.

“They’re _fine_ on their own,” Tony says, but he doesn’t believe it, because there’s no flashing of red and blue and gold down there at street-level, there’s no sign of Hank, towering and huge, or Carol’s energy bursts, or _Thor,_ he thinks, despair tight in his throat. There’s just a sickening body count and a ruined city and Skrulls running around in formation. 

“They’ll regroup,” Tony says, but his throat is dry and his voice is hoarse. 

“Except they won’t,” K’arr’n says. “I know, this is all such a shock. Your Helicarrier, sinking in the harbor, your erstwhile friends dead or captured. But you’re _here_ , Tony, really, that’s what matters.”

Tony looks to the harbor, and everything falls away, because it’s true, he can see the port side jutting out of the shallows, and the metal is crumpled and twisted and _how could this happen_ , they always win, they always pull through, _why didn’t they win_ -

K’arr’n gently thumbs at his chin, and Tony grits his teeth and jerks his head away. “Don’t fucking touch me,” he says, and he can’t feel his toes, it’s so fucking cold. He’s trying not to shiver, but they’re 50 stories up, and the wind is unforgiving even when it’s not February.

Tony tries desperately to pretend that the entirety of his world isn’t unraveling.

K’arr’n’s eyes glimmer and he grabs Tony by the hair instead. “Understand this,” he hisses, yanking his head back so Tony can’t anywhere but up into his terribly human eyes. “You don’t get to tell me what to do. This isn’t your world anymore.”

Tony spits in his face.

K’arr’n strikes him for his impudence, entirely unimpressed, and Tony feels his lip splitting on his own teeth. K’arr’n pulls him into his body in some horrible parody of an embrace, and the scale digs into Tony’s bare, bruised chest. He shudders and tells himself it’s because of the cold, not because of the proximity to K’arr’n, to this body that’s hurt him, it’s the _cold –_

“No one is coming for you,” K’arr’n says, whispering in his ear, “remember that.”

And then he’s pulling Tony roughly inside again, and he loses his balance for a minute and sinks to his knees on the rug. “Cellblock,” K’arr’n says, and then there are two burly-looking Skrulls flanking him with energy weapons, pulling him back to the elevator.

K’arr’n follows.

 

\- - -

 

They lead Tony back down, stories and stories, and when they get off the elevator and he’s forced to walk again, he stumbles. Because his hands are chained behind his back and his feet are shackled together and he’s light-headed and cold and terrified that this happened and he didn’t even fucking see it coming.

They stop, finally, on the detention level Tony threw together as a precaution, once upon a time.

Well.

K’arr’n is punching in a code in front of one of the cells, one of the bigger ones. They’ve modified the design– it’s projecting an energy barrier with a signature Tony doesn’t recognize without his brain to look things up for him, and they’ve put a chair in the middle of the room, pushed a table up against the side wall. He designed these cells for supervillains, to hold them until they could transfer them somewhere secure. Steve insisted on testing them himself, and if Steve couldn't escape after four hours and Tony sitting in the hallway and laughing at him - 

Tony’s not getting out of this. 

They let him sit, which surprises and unnerves him, because they probably intend to keep him for the long haul. They run chains his elbows and his waist and his neck, through the ones already binding his wrists and ankles and bolt them solidly to a peg in the floor beneath him. K’arr’n paces the room and looks at Tony like he's a piece of meat, and Tony is left to wonder what’s to become of him.

He doesn’t wonder long, though, because the door hisses and a female Skrull breezes in, dressed in Jessica’s costume.

“ _You_ ,” Tony snarls. “You were one of them.” And it all makes sense now, and he literally couldn’t have picked a _worse_ double agent to keep an eye on the Underground Avengers. “Where’s Jessica,” he says, as if his voice isn’t trembling, “the real one.”

“Jessica Drew is dead, Tony Stark. We executed her along with the others when we no longer required the source material.” Her voice is low and clear and dangerous, and she speaks with an easy confidence that chills Tony to the bone.

Tony pales. “The others?”

“Your Reed Richards. Your faithful Edwin Jarvis. Sue Storm. Elektra, as you know. Black Bolt. Henry Pym. Timothy Dugan. Countless others.”

Tony thinks he should be used to his friends dying by now, but he feels it like another blow, his hope leaving him, because he really wanted to believe that this kind of infiltration was isolated. But they _knew_ , everything, everyone he trusted, everyone he shared secrets with. The Illuminati. The Fantastic Four. Fucking S.H.I.E.L.D.

Played.

He’s given them so many opportunities, so many chances to manipulate him.

A sonic boom rocks the room, and Tony looks around desperately, searches for an out, half-expects someone to rush in and save him, but the Skrull seems unconcerned.

She laughs, a high, clear laugh.

“I am Veranke,” she says, “Queen of the Skrulls. And you, Tony Stark, are a very foolish man.”

He doesn’t have anything to say to that, but his cheeks flush red with shame because he knows well enough. She doesn’t have to recount his failings.

 _K’arr’n in his mouth, K’arr’n pulling his hair until he cried, K’arr’n with his hands around Tony’s neck_.

And he took it.

He feels tears burning in his eyes.

She smiles. “The invasion is almost over,” she says. “Everything has gone according to plan. We owe you great thanks.”

He spits at her, but misses.

“You should be grateful,” she says, genuinely confused.

“Oh, well, in that case, fuck you very much,” says Tony, swallowing blood.

“Don’t you see,” she says. “Your world was dying. This is your _chance,_ ” she says.

“Our world was _fine_ ,” he says. “I thought you were beyond imperialism.”

“Your world was a _disaster_ ,” she spits. “Humans are rapacious and insatiable and  you swarm and alter with no thought given to the consequences. You doomed yourself to extinction hundreds of years ago when you learned to change the metal you gleaned from the rocks. You struggle and kill each other ceaselessly for resources that will not make the difference when your societies stagnate and decay.” She steps nearer, and crouches in one regal, fluid motion, runs a finger over his split lip.

Tony would desperately love to have his legs free to kick her in the face.

“We are giving your species a chance to live on. Be grateful.”

Tony doesn’t answer, but his gaze drifts, from his feet, to the guards, to K’arr’n in the corner. Veranke must notice, because she nods at him.

“He was chosen, you know. We wouldn’t send just anyone to ply you, Tony Stark. He is our finest saboteur. He has won himself eternal honor for his dedication to the empire.” She offers K’arr’n what Tony suspects is a rare smile, and Tony wonders idly if they’re lovers.

If K’arr’n is capable of love.

He was fucking her after all.

“You will help us,” she says. “The Avengers are gone. Dead. A few of them have scurried away like rats to hide and lick their wounds, but we will find them. You, Tony Stark, will help us to overcome these last few obstacles, and you will be spared,” she whispers into his ear.

“As what,” Tony spits. “A slave? Have you learned _nothing_ about me?”

Her grin widens, wraps itself higher on her face. Cruel.

“We have,” she says. “You’ve endured much, for a human. You are worn. I will show you mercy, Tony Stark. I will alter your memory and ease your pain.”

Tony blinks, because he’s hurting, and she’s just offered him the only thing he would ever say yes to.

A clean slate.

“You don’t need me,” he says wearily, “he knows everything I know, wasn’t that the _point_?”

She sighs, and Tony should find it funny, how Skrull mannerisms are so similar to human ones.

“Mm,” she says, glancing at K’arr’n with something Tony thinks is annoyance. “You have information regarding Nick Fury’s whereabouts that was lost due to _negligence_ " - K'arr'n stiffens in the corner - "and a targeting mishap during the battle.” Her eyes narrow and she shifts, crosses her arms in a painfully Jessica-like fashion. “The offer stands. It would behoove you to cooperate.”

He thinks about Fury and what’s so fucking important that the Skrulls want to find him.

He thinks about how they’ll probably kill him if he refuses.

He thinks about the last words he ever spoke to Steve, of the hate in his eyes as Tony bit angry, petty things and stalked away like an angry child. He thinks of Pepper, who can’t look at him, of Carol’s panicked last transmission. He thinks of the Avengers, scattered and broken _,_ scrambling to defend a world that hates them.

 _Your fault_.

He thinks of K’arr’n, fucking into his body.

He looks at the Skrull Queen, her eyes shining with triumph and power, the green of her face gone weirdly luminescent beneath the halogen glare. He thinks he should be better than this. He thinks he should spit in her face again, or fight tooth and nail to preserve his dignity, his humanity, whatever he’s supposed to have and apparenlty doesn’t.

He wants to say yes.

“No,” he says, and bows his head, because he knows that he’ll change his mind if he looks at her for too long.

He knows he’s weak.

“Well,” she says, turning to leave. “You will help us, even if we must ruin you first.” 

The door hisses shut behind her.

Of course, of course they weren’t planning to summarily execute him.

 _You're an_ idiot _, Stark_. 

Tony bites his lip and blinks, blinks his tears back, _hold it together, Tony_. He hates this part, he was counting on the death part of the ultimatum, but now It’s going to be messy, messy and protracted and painful, and Tony’s never been fantastic at resisting interrogation.

He's not cut out for this. 

K’arr’n has something like a KA-BAR in his hands.

“Why did you do it,” Tony says, because he’s not sure he’ll be able to speak after this. “She was waiting for you. Why put in the extra _effort,_ ” he spits, tears in his eyes. 

K’arr’n looks at him, considering, before swinging a leg over Tony’s and straddling his lap. Tony feels him, hot leather against his clammy skin, grinding not-so-incidentally against him. Tony goes stone-still, that isn't a thing he wants, it's the last thing he wants, he never wants to be touched again, really, and why can't K'arr'n be professional about this - 

“I’m a spy, Tony. Why did _you_ do it?” he says, and he’s using Steve’s voice, still. Tony wishes he would stop, and wonders if he can (he's still got Steve's eyes, too, and his hair). “You could have left. So eager for penance that you were willing to throw yourself at my feet?” 

Tony closes his eyes in mute humiliation.

He presses the knife to the soft skin under Tony’s ribs.

“Maybe you knew. Maybe you just wanted to be punished. _”_

Tony bites his lip hard, harder, enough to taste blood.

“Tell me where Fury is, Tony.”

Tony stays utterly silent, and then there's the slide of cold steel, and K'arr'n is slicing into him. 

Then he screams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just, you know, for the record, the extremis extraction ACTUALLY HAPPENS in 616-canon. So. I know, it seems like his bones would be hollow and then they wouldn't support his weight and they'd snap, but they DON'T, and MATT FRACTION doesn't have to explain himself so neither will I.


	17. Terms of Endearment

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've done bad things in this chapter. Warnings for graphic violence and rape. 
> 
> (I'm sorry.)

Tony is sobbing after an hour.

K’arr’n sits in his lap, paints Tony’s lips with his own blood, drags the knife across his skin. It’s not even bad yet, he knows, it’s not even half as horrible as it could be, and he’s done already, he’s – he can’t -

He has to keep his head.

(He doesn’t know how to do this.)

K’arr’n is cutting into the soft skin between his hip and his thigh, etching what he knows will be a scar into his lower lip. He knows too many things, too many important things, safehouse locations and codes and blueprints and his _infinity gem_ , why does he know so much –

K’arr’n doesn’t ask him about any of that. He wants to know about Fury. A string of numbers. That’s all it would take.

(Why didn’t Fury _tell him_ , why did Natasha have to pick now of all times to be petty, why, why, why -)

 _I have no idea what he thinks you can do,_ she said.

Tony can - Tony is going to hold out. That’s what he can do. Fury is more important than him. Fury can do more. He has – he must have an ace up his sleeve.

(He has to.)

K’arr’n climbs out of his lap, briefly, and he’s wiping his hands on something – there’s a table, Tony thinks with dull terror, on the side, there, shining with sharp things and leather things, and K’arr'n puts the knife down and picks something else up -

“I don’t know,” Tony gasps, because he has the chance, “you’re wasting your time, I don’t remember without Extremis -”

“Yeah, you do,” K’arr’n says, and he’s climbing back into Tony’s lap. “You have an eidetic memory, Tony.”

“I don’t REMEMBER,” he says, his eyes wide and bright with fear, and then there’s the smell of burning flesh, right under his nipple, K’arr’n is pressing a soldering iron to his skin, no, no, no, NO –

 

\- - -

 

They sponge him off, after – some time. Hours. Days, maybe. Long enough for K’arr’n to burn through to Tony’s muscle, to deaden his skin and rip screams from his lungs.

K’arr’n bandages his wounds and dresses him in Gucci. He’s manhandled into red silk and grey wool and lilts, dizzy, as K’arr’n ties a tie around his neck. “Behave,” K’arr’n says, rubbing product into Tony’s damp hair, fitting a butterfly strip over his eyebrow. “I’ve always liked you in red,” he decides, as he clamps cuffs back around Tony’s wrists.

Tony doesn’t say anything.

They lead him out to the southern tower, up the elevator and out to the open-air press arena. They have a camera set up, and Veranke is saying something, out in the middle, flanked by guards and looking, truly, like the queen she is, in armor and some sort of satiny cape. It’s her stage, Tony thinks, as he watches her gesticulate and preach to the cameras. It’s her stage, but she’s not acting. She doesn’t need to.

No wonder she’s led her people to victory, he thinks. She believes in what she’s doing.

She’s saying things, about a new era, about embracing change, about humanity’s new place, about how their leaders have capitulated. The prophecy is fulfilled, she says, beaming.

Tony is led into the middle of the room, settled beside her, flanked by two guards. He sways on his feet.

“Thank your leaders,” she says, gesturing at him. “They made this possible. Your heroes are nothing before the Skrull.” She grabs him by the hair, and he stiffens, freezes as he’s learned to do. “This one,” she says, “this one betrayed you all. He gave himself to a Skrull agent. The man you trusted with the security of your world. Collusion, isn’t that what you say here?” She reaches a hand up to his face. “A traitor,” she says.

Tony looks mutely back. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to say.

“We are not cruel conquerors,” she says, turning back to the camera. “We will protect you, as the ones you trusted failed to do.”

She holds out a hand, and someone hands her something, cards, Tony sees, and then she’s pressing them into his chained hands, closing his fingers around them. “Read,” she hisses from between her pointed teeth.

Tony looks down at what he’s holding.

_Resistance will not be tolerated. Weapons are to be surrendered upon request. Work assignments will be delivered when the census is complete. Food production will continue as usual until the energy conversion is complete. Those wishing to present themselves for consideration for a -_

“No,” Tony mumbles, glancing up. “Read your own fucking announcements.”

She leans in to whisper in his ear. “Read, or it will be Maya Hansen down there in that cell.”

“Resistance will not be tolerated,” Tony rasps.  

 

\- - -

 

Every day, K’arr’n comes in, picks him up. Drags him to the next room, sits him in the chair.

Hurts him.

No explosions rock the tower. There are no planes, there are no rescue attempts. There are no sounds of battle or resistance.

No one comes.

Tony thinks he should be surprised, and isn’t.

(He’s going to die here.)

 

\- - -

 

They drag him up to the penthouse sometimes, maybe once a week. They don’t put him in a suit like they did the first time (clothes are a distant dream), but they give him cue cards and dig their spears into his ribs until he reads them. They record him (in what he hopes are not wide shots) announcing the new world order. He suspects they’ll play it back on whatever network they’re using now that they’ve fucked his up.

There’s no reason to have him do it. Tony suspects it amuses K’arr’n. Veranke is never there to see.

He wonders if any of them are alive to see him.

(Surely, they’d have come if they were.)

 

\- - -

 

Tony realizes his body has made the decision for him.

He doesn’t know how long it’s been, he tried to smear his blood on the walls, after the first time, intended to keep count, but then it was burning, and then it was freezing, in the snow on the balcony for 3 hours and he shook and shook when they put him back, and water, and electricity, and he hurts –

“41,” Tony hears himself gasping, and then numbers are spilling out of his mouth, Nat's coordinates. He can't remember if they're right, but it's all he has, it's all he can give. He’s openly sobbing, because K’arr’n has been pulling out his fingernails one by one, prodding his nailbeds with the point of his dagger until his blood runs over his hands, he can’t do this anymore, he can’t.

“You’re terrible at this,” K’arr’n says with a sigh, wiping Tony’s blood from his knife. “He’d be ashamed of you, Tony.”

Tony knows.

He’s surprised he still bleeds.

 

\- - -

 

K’arr’n drags Maya into his cell the next morning.

Tony tries to scrambles up, but it’s a poor job, and the best he can do is kneel and strain at the end of his tether. “Don’t,” he says immediately, trying to punch forward out of the chains that are holding him, “please, I’ve told you what I know, please, PLEASE, this isn’t her fight -“

She’s not struggling. There’s a gash over her eye, and she’s swaying on her feet, it’s really only K’arr’n’s grip that’s holding her up. Her hands are bound with rope, her eyes are wide with terror, but she’s still looking at Tony with some mixture of pity and revulsion and disbelief -

“You lied to me, Tony,” K’arr’n says, and presses his dagger against her throat. “There was nothing there,” he snarls.

“I don’t know why,” Tony moans, “I didn’t lie, I didn’t, please, don’t, I told you everything she told me, I fucking swear -”

“You made me look like a fool,” K’arr’n snarls. “I’m done playing games with you. _Tell me_.”

“No,” he says, tears springing unbidden to his eyes, “no, no, no, I’ll – I don’t know, just, please no, don’t, this isn’t her fault, don’t, _please_ –“

K’arr’n drags the knife across her throat, and then she’s bleeding all over the white, all over, all over.

Maya crumples to the floor, and her eyes are still open as she gasps, splutters out a last few breaths, and finally stills. Her eyes are frozen open in something like accusation.

Tony is crying, and he can’t look away, he gasps into his palms pressed desperately against his mouth. _Breathe, breathe, breathe -_

He can’t –

_He can't._

K’arr’n steps over her body and wipes the blade of his dagger on Tony’s skin before sliding it back into the sheath he carries around his thigh. “I believe you,” he whispers, and then he’s gone, stepping over her body on his way out. The guards come in and drag her out.

The red glistens on the floor.

Tony crawls into the far corner, wedges himself in next to the toilet, and holds himself until he can stop shaking.

His cell smells like blood.

He doesn’t sleep for three days.

 

\- - -

 

“What do you want with me,” Tony says, finally. They hardly sound like words, his voice is so ragged. “I’ve told you what I know.”

K’arr’n moves his pencil over the sketchpad he’s been working on for the past 3 hours.

“You know,” K’arr’n says finally, his pencil stilling, “I studied art for this assignment. Your Captain was an artist, before he was a soldier, so I prepared for every eventuality. I never did need to use my skills to convince you.”

He rips the page out and holds it in front of Tony. It’s him, chained and bleeding, his head bowed, his muscles bruised and straining from his bonds.

It’s exactly like Steve’s style. It could have been rendered in his hand.

“I think it’s a good likeness,” he says conversationally. “What do you think, Tony? Do you think the Captain would enjoy my work?”

He flips the page and begins anew.

Tony watches his own blood drip onto the floor.

 

\- - -

 

She kneels, in front of him. Raises his eyelids one by one with her green thumbs. She’s wearing leather, armor on her forearms, plated over her chest. A high collar, some glittering red stone set deep into her headdress.

Tony feels blood from his nose trickling down his throat. He thinks it’s on his chin, too, he can’t keep his mouth shut and he’s sagging, his chin resting on his bloodied chest. His right eye is swollen shut, maybe. 

Veranke quirks her head to the side, just like Jessica used to.

“Stop ruining his face,” she says, rising. “I want him as my chief engineer, if you ever get me what I asked for in the first place.”

(K’arr’n hasn’t asked him questions in weeks.)

K’arr’n touches her face like he wants to kiss her, but she swats his hand away.

“Or a concubine, perhaps,” she says, and sweeps out the door.

K’arr’n stands stupidly for a minute after she leaves, his fists clenching and unclenching. And then he snatches the picana back up and thrusts it against Tony’s ribs.

Tony thinks maybe it’s personal.

 

\- - -

 

Tony is getting his weekly hosing down.

They’ve installed a hook in the ceiling, because he can’t stand on his own for this anymore, so he sags in his chains and whimpers when the pressure hits the fresh bruises on his skin. It’s freezing, always freezing, and Tony shivers and watches his blood mix with the water and slide across the polished white floor.

K’arr’n comes at him with an electric razor, when they’re done. That’s not unusual, though it happens less frequently. He supposes it’s been awhile, by the length of his beard. He suspects Veranke is going to come play with him soon, they don’t seem to like human filth, and she never makes an appearance unless he’s been recently cleaned and shorn. The buzzing hurts (everything hurts), but he’s too weak to do anything but let his head be turned and placed, and his beard falls away under K’arr’n’s hands.

K’arr’n lets him close his eyes today.

The razor stops, and then his head is being pulled back, they’re prying his jaw open (it doesn’t take much), they’re fitting the awful gag with the clamps in, the one that keeps his throat relaxed and his mouth wide open.

(He hates this part.)

They hold his head back by the hair while they squeeze the packet into his mouth. He tries not to taste it, but it’s too close to motor oil not to. It’s a high-calorie paste, K’arr’n had explained, after he’d refused to eat his food for a few days, in the beginning. No matter, he’d said, human food is so inefficient anyway, and isn’t it easier to just consume 15,000 calories once a week, Tony? It slides down his throat on its own now, they’ve altered the consistency to be thinner after he’d spit it all over K’arr’n’s face instead of swallowing it the first time.

Tony stares at the ceiling until it’s all down, because there’s nothing else he can do. When they’re satisfied he’s not going to puke it up, they pour a bottle of water into his mouth and they unhook his hands and pull the gag out of his throat. K’arr’n runs a quick hand over his cheek, but he seems satisfied, because then they’re dragging him back down the hallway to the cell where they torture him, still dripping wet.

Electricity today, then.

 

\- - -

 

Tony begins to wonder if the reality of life is predicated upon the repetition of gestures and phrases. Interactions. Things. 

No one talks to him here. He doesn't have a life beyond the bright white and these polymer walls, beyond pain and blood and screams and sobs. 

He’s starting to forget how things feel. Silk under his fingers. The warm hum of alcohol spreading out from his cerebellum. He tries to remember words, to conjure up things he _knows_ people must be experiencing somewhere. Somewhere, men walk free, they drive in cars, they make love to their lovers, somewhere, they’ve driven the Skrulls back…

_Brooklyn. Latex. Adamantium._

Their shapes become hazy, clumsy in his mind. A short circuit. They slip.

_Quinjet._

You remember what you want to forget and forget what you want to remember.

_Vibranium._

Sometimes, other memories slip to the surface, things he’d thought he’d forgotten. The flush of pink skin under lights. Sweat, someone else’s. Not Steve’s, but he can imagine. The freedom of thousand thread count sheets and doors and clothes. 

Metal on his skin. Power at his fingertips.

The absence of pain.

_Steve._

He fears that every time he recalls a memory, he’s doing something, injustice, to the original. Tampering. Adding color to a charcoal rendering.

He has to be careful. These have to last him.

(He’s not going to get to make new ones.)

He wishes they’d just kill him.

 

\- - -

 

“Stop,” he whimpers, as K’arr’n’s boot connects with his kidney, as K’arr’n’s fingers find his soft places and ruin them with bruises and cuts, as K’arr’n paints his back with welts and burns. “I told you,” he screams, “I told you, I told you, please, please, stop.”

He has to breathe, but he jolts, electricity dances in his muscles, he jerks like a puppet on metal strings.

“What do you want from me,” he sobs. “Tell me what you want to know, just tell me.”

“I don’t want anything from you,” K’arr’n says. “This is for edification.”

“Please,” Tony says to no one, “please.”

 

\- - -

 

“I’ll give you a choice.” K’arr’n swipes his thumb over Tony’s cheek, through the blood trickling from his mouth. “I can beat you today,” he says, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world, “or I can fuck you.”

Of course.

Tony can’t make his mouth form words. He trembles (that's an automatic response now, too, he can't seem to stop) and K’arr’n can see, K’arr’n can see everything, all of him, naked in a heap on this floor. K’arr’n touches Tony’s lips, and Tony is beyond actively responding, so he lies there and looks at K’arr’n’s boots, looks at the floor, looks anywhere but his face.

This is what he is now, he thinks dully.

“I’ll even use the Captain’s face,” K’arr’n says, and then he’s changing, true to his word, and Tony’s chest aches and his stomach feels like it’s rotting and he wonders if there’s even a point in saying no. 

Steve would be ashamed of him.

“She’s cross with me right now,” he continues, and he’s angry, angrier than usual, his voice gone level and mean and dark. “She’s cross with me, because I’m not getting the _results_ she wants.” He pinches Tony’s skin between his nails, watches the marks come up, and Tony isn’t going to make noise, he’s not, he’s not –

“Really, she’s been unhappy with me since I took this assignment,” he says, dipping the tip of the knife into Tony’s skin again, “she didn’t like it, how I handled you.” He drags it through Tony’s sweat, and Tony tries to crawl away, but K’arr’n slices, then, and that’s a different pain, sharper, colder, and Tony can’t help it, the sounds that come from his mouth. K’arr’n wipes the knife on Tony’s skin, resheathes it, apparently satisfied, and grabs Tony by the throat instead. Presses his fingernail into the vein. “And now I’m banned from her rooms until she decides I’m _worthy_ again,” he hisses. “You’ve driven her away from me, Tony, I spent 8 months away from her preparing for _you_ and 2 more ruining your life as per my orders and now she doesn’t _want_ me. She won’t let me touch her anymore.” He reaches a thumb out to the door to shut off the security cameras. “She’s not like you, Tony.” He yanks Tony up by the collar around his neck. “Explain it to me.”

Tony doesn’t say anything, so K’arr’n kicks him swiftly in the stomach until he’s gasping again, until there’s blood in his throat, bubbling up on his tongue. “You’re a sadist,” Tony says, finally, in the barest of whispers, and it’s the most he’s spoken in weeks. (Words don’t sound right from his mouth, only screams and sobs and horrible cries.)

K'arr'n cocks his head to the side. “What does that make you, then?”

 _Scared_ , Tony thinks.

It’s no choice at all, really.

“How do you want me,” Tony rasps, and closes his eyes so he doesn’t have to see K’arr’n smiling.

He thinks his heart should be racing. But it’s sluggish, beating just fast enough to keep him breathing. He doesn’t have the energy for panic.

“I’ve needed this,” K’arr’n says, and it might be the most honest thing Tony’s ever heard come out of his mouth. He’s grabbing the chain attached to the collar, wrapping it in one hand like it’s a leash, unbuckling his belt with the other. Tony wonders, vaguely, as his body is being arranged, if K’arr’n is going to strap him with it.

Tony thinks maybe he used to be a person, once.

K’arr’n kisses Tony’s face, licks the blood off of his mouth. “Keep your eyes open,” he says, and Tony sinks, and sinks -

Tony sends himself away.

 

\- - -

 

Tony drags himself into a corner.

He lies on his side, reaches up with one trembling hand and swipes it over his face. Tries to smudge away the fuck-all in his stubble, that’s run all over his chin, that’s dripping down into his eyes. He smears it on his hip, because at least that’s marginally better than leaving it to dry on his face.

(It was better than being electrocuted for four hours.)

Steve would –

Steve would have picked the torture.  

He curls his knees up to his chest and sobs into his arms. 

 

\- - -

\- - -

\- - -

He wakes to shouting, and pain.

Darkness.

Steve gasps himself back into life.

There’s air, but it’s ice in his lungs, freezing on his skin – damp, he’s damp, or wet, and his whole body feels overstimulated, a live wire, a raw nerve. He’s so very cold, and the last time it felt like this he was ripped from the ice -

He sucks in air desperately, but there isn’t enough, his chest is heavy, too tight, like suffocation lies just beyond each breath. He’s lying on something – metal on his back, against his tremoring muscles -

 _Not again,_ is all he can think.

“Steve.”

He should be dead. He died. Properly, this time, there were bullets, and shouting, it was a _relief_ -

“Dammit, Rogers, _wake up._ ”

He blinks, and blinks, but it’s all shadow and no sense, shapes that don’t mean anything. He tries to speak, but pain fires through his head, and he curls in on himself and moans.

The darkness is getting brighter and louder, and he _aches_ _-_

Steve blinks again, and everything is swimming, a ceiling, broken glass. He tries to draw a breath, tries to answer, _I’m awake,_ but he can’t, he’s coughing, he thinks there’s water in his lungs, and _why,_ why does this keep happening to him?

(He was glad to have the bullets.)

“Steve,” the voice says, deep and urgent. “Steve, listen to me, we don’t have much time, you need to go, that’s right, open your fucking eyes-“

Steve knows that voice.

He works his mouth, and this time sound comes out. “Nick,” he says. He feels warmer, that’s nice, there’s light and it’s surging towards him, hissing, it’s getting stronger -

“FUCK OFF!”

There’s a gun, being discharged too close to his head, oh, that’s bad, it’s loud, and he smells the powder and metal and flame -

Hands are wrapping around his waist, pulling him to his feet, but his legs don’t work because he hasn’t used them in so long. He flounders and sinks, unsteady, throwing out an arm that catches on something – metal, curved and wires and sloping -

His eyes are starting to work, and he sees now that everything is on fire. “Jesus,“ Steve says, and his voice is strange and rough. There’s smoke starting to fill the room up now, and flames eating at the far wall, at several enormous crates stamped with the S.H.I.E.L.D. insignia -

“No time. Take this, and go, there’s an address in there, it’s the last one,” Nick says, and he’s pressing a full pack into Steve’s hands. He's reloading, slapping another magazine into his pistol -

Steve looks down at the pack in his hands, and he’s naked, dripping wet. Steve looks up, questions on his lips, but then Nick is staggering, and Steve drops the pack to catch him, and what even _is_ this, he’s barely able to stand himself, and the room is on _fire_. Fury gasps as he sags, and there’s blood trickling down his forehead and over his eyepatch.

Steve doesn’t even want to know.

There’s an explosion across the room, and the door shakes on its hinges. There’s more shouting, and pounding, and the scraping of metal, and what sounds like a blowtorch. He ducks, automatically, and it’s really more of a lurch, as gunfire and – _energy weapons_ fire, what the hell – bounce off the metal crate a few feet to his left.

He shouldn’t be surprised, really, this is just what his life has turned into.

“What is this,” Steve says weakly, “is that S.H.I.E.L.D?” He feels dangerously lightheaded, and his legs aren’t solid, but there has to be a weapon around here that he can use -

“ _Go_ , Steve, _”_ he says, forcing himself up and out of Steve’s arms. He draws a pistol from his belt, and he leans heavily on the table, aiming at the door.

“You’re not coming?” he says, dazedly. Nick isn’t stupid.

“They don’t know you’re here,” he says, reloading, “but they’re not gonna leave til’ I’m dead.”

“Who,” Steve says, his mouth dry. He’s feeling more coherent, and he hisses in pain as he hefts a leg that’s still mostly asleep onto the desk under the small window, drags the pack up with him.

“Steve, I will follow you out if I can, but right now you need to move your ass, because you’re the last fucking thing I’ve got up my sleeve.”

Steve doesn’t want to be the last thing Fury’s got up his sleeve. It’s a novel experience, seeing him desperate like this, cornered. Fury, who’s always got an answer, even when he’s hiding in the dark, he’s always got a handle on things -

Fury catches a bullet in his side.

“Oh my god -”

“GO, you fucking _moron_!” Fury half-gasps, half-yells. 

Steve stuffs the pack through the window and scrambles up after it, his entire body screaming in protest, and the din gets louder behind him. He feels it, on his back, as something in the room explodes, the heat rolling out in a wave. He drags his feet through, and then the window seals shut with a hiss behind him.

He swears, because Fury is a goddamn liar.

Then he looks up, and wishes he hadn’t.

The sky is – terrifying and wrong, it’s so very wrong. It looks like it could be sunset, or sunrise, but it’s not the right shade, it’s red rubbed into grey, tinged with green, a dirty smear hanging heavy behind the moon. The trees loom, skeletal, not 50 meters ahead of him, sharp and sinister, but the air is cold and _humid_ , almost, heavy on his bare chest, in his lungs. Not right for winter.

He leaves everyone alone and everything goes to shit.

But there’s weapons fire behind him, and he’s utterly exposed as he is, so he hefts his pack and runs for the trees like his life depends on it. 

He’s barely made it to the woods when the ground tremors under his feet, and he turns around just in time to see the blast as the building explodes.

“Aw, no,” Steve whispers in disbelief. “ _Dammit_ , Nick.”

Nick must have rigged it before Steve was even awake, the lying bastard. There’s no way he survived that. There’s no way anyone survived that.  

Something is seriously wrong if Fury has no compunctions about blowing up S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. Whoever.

He wonders if Tony is behind this.

Steve slumps against a tree, because he’s shaking and dizzy and still terribly wet and cold. He wants to rest (God knows he deserves it), but he needs to do recon, he needs to know what had Nick Fury cornered in a bolthole in the woods. He needs to know who was knocking down the door. Who was gunning for Nick. If it was S.H.I.E.L.D.

He worries that this isn’t the same universe he died in.  How dire have things become, for the skies to have been scorched like this, for Steve to have been Nick’s last project?

Steve wants to know why he’s worth dying for.

But there’s gunfire behind him, the sound of something big and lumbering over stone, the snapping of wood. Still a mile away or so, but he needs to move. Steve doesn’t have the luxury of resting right now.

Running, that he can do.

It never ends, he thinks as he kneels in the dewy grass, the sky alight behind him. 

 

* * *

END PART I

* * *

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know. You all must think I just sit back after every chapter I write and try to top myself. _What can I do to Tony that will crush his soul beyond repair,_ I whisper to myself. 
> 
> (I don't actually do this.)
> 
> Actually, I've had this whole thing planned out from the beginning. I can't decide if that's better or worse than spontaneous angst. 
> 
> So, really, that's the worst of it. I know I said that like 3 chapters ago, but this has been written for awhile and I wasn't thinking about it. So. 
> 
> You're all so great and I kindof can't believe you're still reading. But I am pleased.


	18. Friends Like These

* * *

 PART II

* * *

 

 

_“ – yeah, we’re clear. Vitals strong, next injection autoscheduled for an hour from now. Jesus, what does it take to kill this freak –”_

_He remembers this from when he was dead for seventy years. Everything muted. Everything dulled._

_“ – the rendezvous point at LVI –”_

_He might be drugged. Drugs rarely work on him, but he’s out, in, out. He’s blind. His body is all warmth and wires bundled around his biceps. Moving is so hard. Why would he move?_

_“ – that idiot Stark –”_

_He drifts._

_“ – ain’t gonna keep Victor Von Doom waiting, asshat –”_

_He sees things. Memories, maybe. He’s dead, maybe. He sees the top edge of his shield and a gleaming gloss of gold and red beneath. He sees a face with dark hair and blue eyes darker than his own._

_He’s jolted. There’s cold on his skin, out of the warmth. Something hard and firm against his flank, his side. He’d like to be dead again._

_“What the shit – ”_

_Jessica. The word flits across his brain and he’s gone. It’s so dark._

_“ – not the package I thought we were stealing.”_

_His dream-prison is jostled, slid, and he should say something, but the warmth is intoxicating, and something cool presses into his neck, and then he welcomes back the dark –_

\- - -

 

Steve is running.

It took 2 minutes to drag on the fatigues and the shirt he found in the pack, another 30 seconds to dig around to see if there was a compass (there was) and 3 volleys of gunfire and some sort of transport hissing overhead to get him to finally bolt deeper into the trees.

He really needs to find shoes.

He doesn’t know what (who?) he’s running from, or where he is. He doesn’t know where he’s going, except that he’s heading vaguely southeast. He doesn’t even know if he’s being chased, honestly, the chance that they saw him is slim-to-none, but they seem to have more firepower than he does, and he really needs a place to regroup and figure out what the hell is going on.

The ground isn’t snow-covered, but it’s frozen, and his toes are starting to go numb. He’s in no real danger – even if he gets low-level frostbite, his cells will regenerate in a few hours, but he doesn’t want to be running on burning feet when that happens.

He almost doesn’t see it, after about an hour and a half of tunnel vision from making his way through sparse, dead forest and trying not to lose his footing on the rocks embedded in the ground. It’s unassuming, a little hut with a wide, flat roof, a few hundred feet in front of him, down a rocky slope. He scrambles down and darts around the front, relieved to have found something so quickly.

And then he promptly fights the urge to vomit.

There’s a body – what’s left of one, strewn across the steps leading up to a square covered platform. There are maggots, wriggling on what used to be skin and muscle, poking through the tattered plaid fabric.

A body. (A civilian, looks like.) In a thru-hiker’s shelter. Rotting. No one’s removed it.

There’s a pistol, inside, still grasped in what Steve thinks used to be a hand.

(Everything, _everything_ goes to hell as soon as he leaves.)

He clamps a hand over his face and does his very best to breathe through his mouth. The carved sign on the eave reads “Kirkridge Shelter,” and Steve really wants to be anywhere but here, but he’s still barefoot and he really needs to stop and warm up, so he toes around the body and climbs up onto the ledge. He settles himself in the back corner, far, far away from the body, and empties his pack onto the floor.

There’s a map of the area (turns out he’s in Pennsylvania), a handful of the super-compact MREs, a water bladder and iodine drops (full, he’s pleased to see, but even so, there was a spigot not 30 feet from the shelter), socks, an silver thermal blanket, a KA-BAR, an AR-7, with a few hundred rounds in a belt with ammo pouches, a beat-up Glock with the same and two extra magazines, a pair of combat boots wedged in the bottom (thank god, he really doesn’t want to clean half-decayed foot out of that poor bastard’s sneakers) a sparse first-aid kit (with only gauze, painkillers, and antibiotics, which is truly worrying), a lighter and flints, and more socks. A coiled length of paracord. A light jacket, not really warm enough for the weather.

He wonders what’s become of his shield.

He tries the outer pockets, too, just to be thorough, and that’s where he finds the note.

It’s written in Fury’s antiquated hand, all scrawls and loops, and Steve is disproportionately grateful that he’s had the foresight to explain exactly how everything’s gone to shit in his absence, because he thinks he might have had a coronary if he’d been left to figure it out on his own. It’s what’s on the first page that he needs most immediately, an address he doesn’t recognize in Roscoe, New York. He suspects it’s one of the safehouses Fury was feeding him during the war - there were supposed to be 28 of them, but he never told Steve how to get to more than one at a time. He wonders if this is the only one left, now. Further examination of the map indicates that it’s somewhere north of the Pennsylvania border, a farm just outside the boundary of some state forest with a few lakes in the middle of nowhere.

Well. Only 28 hours to get there at a fast clip.

He reads the rest, and he learns things.

That what he’s looking at is the aftermath of a Skrull Invasion. Full-blown, ill met. That the Avengers never even saw it coming. That they lost.

That the Skrulls are everywhere, now, every major city, every continent. Remaking the world in their image, assimilating the human race into their new societal model. That they’ve set up shop in New York City. No more Helicarrier, no more S.H.I.E.L.D. No more government.

That Bucky is dead. That Sharon is gone. Others, too. Natasha. More missing, replaced by Skrulls. Reed Richards. Jessica Drew. Jarvis. Hank.

(He realizes he’s ripped the note in half, so he holds it together with shaking hands and plows through the rest.)

That Nick is sorry he couldn’t get Steve up and un-dead sooner, but you try wading through 2000 pages of technical manual in German. That Nick intercepted his body unintentionally on its way to Latveria for some half-assed resurrection orchestrated by Red Skull. That by then the Skrull agent had already been placed.

That it fooled everyone that mattered with its performance.

Get to the safehouse, it says. Maybe you can do some good.

Steve stares at the pieces in his hands, reeling, like it will unwrite itself if he tries hard enough.

Everything is wrong.

It’s not fair, it’s not fair that he comes back to this, that he’s kneeling in this shelter that smells of rotting flesh and cold and decay. It’s some cosmic joke, it must be – die in a flurry of bullets, gratefully, _eagerly,_ even, after all of that, with Tony – and he’s back, back to this thankless mess, the people he loves (loved), dead.

He turns it over, hoping there’s something more on the back, but there’s nothing. No assurances, no further instructions. No contingency plan. It feels desperate to him, being here, on his own, in the Pennsylvania woods, with a pack and a note and a vague idea that things have gone terribly off the rails. He reads it again, but there’s no mention of the goddamned bill. He can imagine, though. Tony at the helm, everyone scattered – it can’t have hindered the Skrulls’ success.

But Tony would have – rallied everyone. _Wouldn’t he?_

Steve realizes he doesn’t know what Tony would do anymore. He wonders if he’s dead, and then he wonders why he still cares so much.

(He’s so tired of caring. People have so much goddamned faith in him.)

_Maybe you can do some good._

He wants to scream.

Wants to, but he doesn’t.

Steve Rogers pulls on his socks with shaking hands. He doesn’t think about Tony, or Sharon, or Bucky, (or Carol, or Luke, or Sam) as he laces his boots, commits the address to memory and sets the note alight until it’s nothing more than a piece of ash. He feels his muscles ache, buckles the belt around his hips. Straps a holster around his thigh, rigs the KA-Bar sheath around his other with a piece of paracord. He stuffs everything else back in the pack, shrugs into the jacket and shoves the map and compass into the pocket of his pants.

He goes North, to find the Avengers. What’s left of them.

To do what, he has no idea.

 

\- - -

 

Steve has been running for 14 hours.

He’s exhausted, he scarfed one of the MREs a few hours ago, but his body has been in stasis, he’s sure he’s dehydrated and he doesn’t know how long he’s been that way. Maybe since he died. He doesn’t feel right, it’s none of the raw power he’s used to, it’s clipped and aching and he hurts. It’s been years since he’s put his body through strain like this. This is what he was designed to do, he knows, they’ve tested his limits in labs, he doesn’t really need sleep like other people do, a few hours here and there, but it’s a cumulative neglect that’s finally catching up, now. He’d been running on nothing for weeks, before he died, tense and angry and desperate all the time, all adrenaline, aching in his bones.

He doesn’t know how much of it is grief. Not that he has time to feel it anyway.

People _need_ him, he thinks bitterly.

 

\- - -

 

He’s decided not to follow the highway, not until he has a better idea of what’s going on, whether he’s in an openly hostile environment (he has to assume he is), so he follows the Delaware River until he can’t anymore. He’s on the wrong side, for a while, and it takes him ages to find a bridge. When he finds it, it’s a fairly major artery, compared to what he’s seen and crossed already. There’s no traffic, though, so he darts across, quick as he’s able, and then it’s back into the wilderness.

It’s not a particularly difficult hike. It’s all woods, county roads – no real _towns_ between him and this farm he’s been directed to. He hasn’t seen a soul, after the body in he shelter, just the odd deer, a few cardinals startled out of the underbrush as he jogs by. He’s glad for the solitude, really. At least no one is actively trying to blow him up (shoot him, capture him), and as far as he can tell, no one is even pursuing him. He could stop, even. Rest.

(No, no he couldn’t, because then he would think about Sharon and Bucky instead of the rocks under his feet, he would ~~think about Tony~~ think about things he can’t change and things that should have been and this mess of a world he’s woken up to -)

He lets his mind go blank and he _runs_.

(He doesn’t let himself imagine how they died.)

He’ll get there by nightfall if he doesn’t sleep.

 

\- - -

 

It’s getting dark when he gets there. Darker, at least, daylight doesn’t seem to be as distinct anymore. He thinks it was night when he left Pennsylvania – the sky got markedly brighter about 7 hours later, and he’s been traveling for about 19 now, so sunset would be about right. The red is dimmer, dimmer here than it was there, even, a faint reddish smudge on black sky. Light pollution, maybe, he thinks, the Skrulls could be using some highly luminescent power source in the cities that leaves the sky like this.

(It can be fixed, it _can_.)

He comes out of the woods a few miles south of his target, if his estimation is still worth anything. It’s flurrying, now – he didn’t notice when he was in the tree cover, but it’s obvious now that he’s out in the open. He’s on a road, another winding, hardly-paved path, covered in a few inches of dirty snow, run over with muddy tire tracks.

At least there’s someone nearby, he thinks.

There are fields, to his left, bracketed by more skeletal trees, a fringe of black against the weirdly luminescent snow. A fire station, he sees, huddled up against the trees, the windows dark, no tracks leading down wide driveway, the bay doors gaping like empty mouths. 

He takes the opportunity to reach into his pack and grab the AR-7. It takes him a few seconds to put together, and it’s probably silly to choose it over the Glock, but he doesn’t know what he’s going to find up there and he’d like something with some range close at hand.

He heads up the road, north, to where this farm is supposed to be. The tracks persist, edging through half-frozen muddy puddles of slush in places, where the road’s crumbled and cracked and succumbed to nature. There aren’t any road signs, and he suspects this is some half-forgotten gravel road in better weather.

He comes out into a clearing after about 20 minutes. It’s not a large farm, but there’s enough open space around the collection of buildings that he skulks around the treeline for a minute to assess. There’s a barn, connected to the two-story farmhouse by a walkway, and a handful of outbuildings – a shed, about 50 yards behind the house, a garage off to the side. There’s an enormous pickup truck parked in front, gas cans stacked and bungee-ed down in the back.

Someone moves in front of one of the front windows, and Steve’s heart leaps.

He grips the rifle tighter, and he walks, right up the driveway, where they can see him clearly if they look. He doesn’t want to be shot before they recognize him, he hasn’t been freezing his ass off in the woods for a day and a half, Fury didn’t _die_ so he could get killed for complacency’s sake –

The lights in front of the house go on – motion detected, he’s only about 35 feet away now, and the front door bangs open. They come rushing out, and Steve raises his rifle before he can even think about it, and then it’s ripped from his hands with a burst of webbing _–_

Steve blinks, blinded by the light, and then his head is a bright burst of pain, there’s energy bouncing around in his muscles, and he sinks to his knees in the snow, all shock and surprise -

“Carol,” he gasps, and then he’s clocked solidly in the back of the head.

 

\- - -

 

Someone is dragging him, he thinks vaguely, someone strong enough to hold him up, and he thinks maybe he should struggle, but he needs to prove he’s friendly, _they might not trust you,_ the note had said, he can do this –   

 _Stop,_ he tries to say, and gets out “Stuh,” instead.

“Nope,” a deep voice says, and then he’s being settled in a chair. It smells like hay, maybe the barn, that’s fine, it’s warm, at least, they’re ripping his pack away, the weight of the Glock against his leg and the coolness of the knife, they’re gone, too.

“Pay attention, fuckface.”

Someone is gripping his chin, tilting his face up, at the same time someone else is wrapping ridiculously heavy chains across his chest, around his wrists, his ankles, anchoring him solidly to the chair.

And then the weird artificial energy in his body is gone, and his head clears, and Luke stands before him, wrapping his hand with a filthy rag.

“Luke,” he says, squinting into the light they’re aiming at his face, “what –“

“You green-blooded hobgoblins just don’t learn, do you,” Luke says.

“What?” Steve says, thoroughly confused, his head ringing and aching, but clear, and lucidity has never been dearer. “Luke, it’s _me_ , I’m not a Skrull, untie me –“

“Oh, that’s real cute.”

“Maybe it’s one of the ones that thinks it’s the real thing,” Carol says, stepping out of the shadows.

“Carol,” Steve says, scanning the room. The barn is dark and there’s not much he can see, but Peter is skulking in the corner, dangling from one of the rafters. Jessica Jones is sitting in a chair near the main door, her arms resting heavily on the back, bone-weary exhaustion written in new lines on her face.

“Done its homework, at least,” Luke says.

Steve tries brute force and only succeeds in rubbing the skin off his wrists. “Luke, listen to me. I’m not a - _HNNNGH_ -“

Luke knocks Steve’s head to the side with a right hook.

“Bullshit,” Luke says. “How’d you find us this time?”

Luke punches him in the stomach and he doubles over in pain, as much as he can with their ridiculous industrial chain to hold him up. It’s not a warning strike, it’s calculated and brutal and efficient, and Steve is genuinely worried about the damage.

“You’re making a mistake,” Steve says, as evenly as he can around the blood in his mouth, “It’s me, I can, prove – Fury sent me - ask me something, anything.” He lets his eyes dart around, looking for an escape route – there’s the one door, it’s certainly wide, but he’d have to get through Carol, anyway, it’s bolted heavily–

Luke laughs. “Still trying to find Fury. Do they think we’re stupid?” He kicks the chair over and Steve’s head slams into the concrete floor. He hisses in pain, because he’s landed on his hands, he can feel them being crushed under his own weight. “We know you have Steve’s memories, jackass.” They won’t be convinced, he realizes. They aren’t going to stop, and Luke presses the toe of his boot into Steve’s throat -

“Luke,” he rasps, “Fury’s dead, how can I prove it to you –”

“Well, it’s ok, you don’t have to talk. We’ll treat you right anyway,” he continues. His boot connects with Steve’s left kidney. 

Steve’s pretty sure he’s just a punching bag now.

“Luke,” Carol says, but she sounds like she’s not willing to press the issue.

“Last chance,” Luke says, “you wanna tell us what you’re doing here?”

Steve stares up at him. “It’s me,” he croaks, “what’s happened to you all?”

Luke snarls and _kicks_ , and it’s all Steve can do to tighten his abs against the unbelievable _violence_ of it, to curl in on himself as best he can. He grits his teeth, but Luke is kicking him everywhere, and Luke is stronger than he is -

“Luke. _Carol_ ,” he says, and it feels like he’s bleeding everywhere, “ _please –“_

Luke aims a kick at his head and Steve’s world fades to nothing.

 

\- - -

 

_“What are you waiting for, Steve,” Tony gasps, bleeding, half-ground into the cement._

_“Finish it,” Tony says, and his voice is dull and there’s nothing left in his eyes -_

_Steve hates Tony for doing this, he hates Tony for driving them here, hates them killing each other, hates, and he’s raising the shield, and he wants to -_

_He_ wants _to._

\- - -

 

Steve wakes, blood warm in his nose.

He feels like he’s been run over by a Mack truck. He tastes blood in his mouth, and his throat and his chest feel like they’re burning, but he can breathe, at least, he’s legitimately warm for the first time he can remember, he’s not restrained -

He opens his eyes and winces, it’s entirely too bright, but he can make out shapes, the cracks in the ceiling, the panes of the window – good enough, he can move - 

He sits up experimentally, and then he’s reeling, and there are soft hands pushing him back into the mattress, with enough strength behind them to hold him there.

“Don’t,” Carol’s voice says. “You have a concussion.”

He blinks, and blinks, until he can see her, perched in a ratty armchair next to his bed. She looks exhausted, thin. Pale. She’s in the grimiest jeans he’s even seen, and her hair is filthy, pulled back into a messy bun and tied out of the way with a black bandanna.

“I’m real,” he says, trying to blink the stabbing pain away, “I’m real, I’m not a Skrull,”

“Yeah,” Carol says quietly. “We know.”

“What clued you in,” Steve says, sitting up again, and he makes it to vertical, this time. He flexes his arms experimentally  - little to no residual stiffness, he must have been out for a few hours. His head feels like a brick, but the concussion should be gone in another hour.

“You passed out,” she says, and her voice is dull and broken, “and you didn’t turn green. They always change back when you knock them out. Or kill them.”

“Oh, well,” Steve says, levering himself off the bed. “I’m so glad you caught it before you beat me to death.”

“I’m sorry,” she says. “We just –“

“Assumed,” Steve offers.

Carol bursts into tears.

“Shut up, Steve, I’m glad you’re alive,” she wails. “I thought he might have given you brain damage, we didn’t know, we thought it was another fucking raid, and it’s so hard, you don’t even know - ”

Steve doesn’t have time to wonder that Carol isn’t trying to arrest him or kill him or bring him to Tony trussed up in a bow, because she’s launching herself at him, burying her face in his t-shirt. “Ok, it’s ok,” he says, pulling her into a messy hug, and she smells like grease and smoke and sweat, but it’s _Carol_ , real, and alive, and snotting into his shoulder. “I’ll live.”

If he’s honest, he’d have done the same.

 

\- - -

 

It’s bad.

It’s weird, seeing them back together, as if nothing had happened, as if they weren’t killing each other in the streets when he – before. It’s not that they got over their differences, he learns. It’s just that things like legislation tend not to matter when your entire species is being subjugated by alien conquerors. 

He tells them what he remembers since he's woken up, and they nod, and stare, like nothing at all can surprise them anymore. They feed him soup. Luke looks guiltily at his hands until he and Jessica leave, after a while, to put the baby down in the other room. Peter sits, dejectedly, on a stool in the corner, turning his mask over and over in his hands. Logan is smoking, inside, and no one is telling him to stop. Clint is there – _alive_ , and uncharacteristically silent. Steve doesn’t see his bow anywhere. Sam is – also alive, but he doesn’t say anything, he just sinks into an armchair and puts his feet up and frowns. Strange leaves to check on Danny, who’s apparently in one of the medical rooms in isolation, focusing his chi to heal himself from their last recon mission. Maria sprawls all over the sofa, and Carol perches on the edge of the bay window seat, like she won’t allow herself to get comfortable for this.

They’re all staring at him like they don’t know what to do with him.

Steve is too hungry to care right now. He eats his way through a loaf of bread and 3 cans of peaches and a bag and a half of beef jerky. They assure him that it’s fine, the basement beneath the farmhouse is just as well-stocked as all the other safehouses were.

“Ok,” he says, when he’s done feeding his metabolism. “Why do you all keep looking at me like that?”

No one says anything.

Steve sighs. “Just tell me,” he says.

 

\- - -

 

It comes out, bit by terrible bit. Sentinels. Bucky. Natasha. The Savage Land. (Clint leaves, when they get to that part.) Jan. Jessica Drew. Starktech.

His imposter.

Steve thinks he should have a response, something constructive. Encouraging. _We’ll fix it,_ he should say. _It wasn’t your fault._

All he can muster is bitterness.  

“How could you _not know_ ,” Steve says, when Carol’s finished. “How would you not question that?”

“It obviously wasn’t outside the realm of possibility, the way you came back,” Maria points out, gesturing with a lazy hand at his body. “That’s why you’re here now, Fury used Schmidt’s equipment, the theory was obviously sound, we never even noticed it went missing from the storage bays,  he probably got Cloak to help -”

“That’s not what I’m talking about,” Steve says, “how – how could you not _tell_. I’d never work with him to hunt you all down, I’d –“

Carol sighs an exasperated sigh. “He had your memories, he had your face, he talked like you, he – and Tony.”

“What _about_ Tony,” Steve snarls, because he’s so very done with dealing with Tony’s neuroses.

Carol glances down, like she’s ashamed of something.

“Tony was – you have to understand, he was – _a mess_ is putting it mildly. He broke down sobbing at your funeral, national TV, ok - he hid in his office for two weeks after that, he wouldn’t talk to anyone, he started drinking again, and then he was just – he didn’t want to be around anyone, he was – it was bad.”

“So?” Steve says. He’s seen it before, it’s nothing he’s ever been able to fix. “It’s nothing new, Carol.”

“So - you’re a fucking idiot,” Carol says, “He was in love with you.”

Steve stares for a full minute. His stomach is twisting, and he doesn’t want to be having this conversation, this is done, this is done and buried. “No, he wasn’t,” he manages, finally. Weakly.

Carol looks enormously uncomfortable. “He was,” she says quietly. 

“I think I would have known if Tony had had feelings for me,” he bites out.

“Well, he was screwing you,” Carol says flatly. “Your double. Whatever. So. You’d think he would have known if something was off.”

Steve thinks he should answer, but he feels like he’s suffocating. 

He realizes he’s not breathing. His pulse is a wild thing thrumming in his throat, and he can’t swallow, and he’s gotten so much of it wrong, hasn’t he, _they’ve_ gotten so much of it wrong, ripping at each other’s throats just to make the other bleed, and, and –

And Tony was screwing him. Skrull-him.

“Well, it was off,” he spits, numb and angry and entirely helpless.

“Yeah,” Carol says, hanging her head, “It was real off. We didn’t think to – well, I didn’t think to question it, Maria didn’t know, Tony didn’t think anything was wrong –“

“Because Tony’s judgment is always sound,” Steve says.

“Just _listen,_ ” Carol says. “I didn’t – no one noticed, Steve, he’s not – not anymore, he wasn’t _talking_ to anyone, we all thought it was a good thing, he put you in charge of the SHRA, which was how it always should have been in the first place, and you two – whatever, I know – they were talking, we thought you were talking again, it was better, Steve, you were just like you in public, I don’t. He should have said something.”

“You said he didn’t know,” Steve says.

“No, that’s not, it’s.” Carol shoots a worried glance at Maria, who crosses her arms and rolls her eyes.

“Carol thinks Stark was being abused,” Maria says. “By your twin.”

And then there’s silence again, and they’re all looking at him, and there’s a lump in his throat he can’t swallow down -

“And you didn’t think that was odd behavior for me,” he manages, and his voice is leaving him, it’s dry in his throat, and he feels ill - 

“ _No_ , fuck, it didn’t occur to me until after,” Carol says, glaring at Maria. “We don’t know for sure, but he was using Tony, I mean, that was the point, he was the perfect target -“

“Why,” Steve says, “why do you think he was being - “

“He had bruises,” Carol shrugs, “he was secretive, I guess, but I didn’t notice at the time, evasive, but that’s nothing new -”

Steve runs a hand over his face. “How do you not say anything when someone is walking around with bruises?”

“It was just _once_ , ok, the day before, I didn’t think anything of them at the time, but then the Invasion happened and it came out he was a Skrull, It’s just conjecture, Steve -”

“How could you not think much of them,” Steve says, “How could you overlook something like that -”

“I was dealing with my own shit,” Carol says, and she’s standing now. “He said he got them sparring with you – your double, _whatever –_ whatwas I _supposed_ to think? It’s not like anyone on the Helicarrier even knew they were together, he wouldn’t have said anything anyway, it’s just speculation -”

“That’s the point,” Steve roars, “he never says anything, it’s happened before, he was _drinking again,_ Carol, Tony doesn’t _function_ when he’s drinking, he needs other people to tell him no, he’s not good at recognizing when he’s in a bad situation, that’s exactly what happened with Tiberius, how could you _let this happen again_ -”

“Didn’t expect you to care so much,” Logan says.

“Fuck you,” Steve says, and he knows it’s not fair, but none of this is fair. “Where were all of you? Hiding?”

“He was doing an excellent job of targeting us happy few who wouldn’t register, even after the Amnesty. We thought _he_ was a Skrull,” Stephen says.

“We were a little busy trying not to get lasered,” Peter says, but it’s not flippant at all, it’s just sad and honest and Steve wants to put his hand through the drywall.

“Steve, I didn’t know,” Maria says, “I didn’t even know he was gay, or, whatever, not entirely straight, I didn’t know he – had a history, is that what you’re implying? He’s wasn’t the most forthcoming -”

“I don’t care!” Steve yells. “You should have figured it out!”

“I didn’t know,” Maria says. “What was I supposed to do, hack his personal security cameras?”

“A recovering alcoholic who’s decided to start drinking again and also happens to be in charge of one of the most powerful organizations in the world? Yeah, you maybe should have done something, Maria!”

“He’s a big boy, Steve,” she says.

“Save it,” he snaps. “What’s your excuse,” he says, turning to Carol. “You were on his side, you of all people -”

“I know,” she says.

“How can you not have realized,” Steve says.

“I’m sorry.”

“How could you have thought that was me?”

“I didn’t, I don’t know,” Carol says, and she’s far away, her eyes have gone distant and sad.

“I need to talk to him,” Steve forces out.

No one speaks.

“Look, I get that he might not want to talk to me, but I need to -”

“He’s not here,” Strange says.

“Then where is he,” Steve says.

“The Skrulls have him.”

“What does that mean, _have him_ -”

Carol sighs. “We don’t know,” she says. “They were holding him in the tower, they used to broadcast him reading these announcements, but that stopped a few weeks ago. They kept finding us, in the beginning, we think he probably told them where we’d go.”

“A few weeks ago? How long have they had him?”

“Since the initial attack,” Maria says quietly.

Steve lets that sink in, and he feels like he’s going to vomit. “He’s been there since the invasion?”

No one but Carol looks even remotely sorry.

“You just left him there,” Steve says.

“Oh, who gives a damn,” Logan is saying. “Do you even know what we’ve been dealing with while you were havin’ a nap? He’s too valuable to kill right away anyway -”

“He let it happen, Steve,” Sam says. “He knew it was coming, and he was too busy screwing you to do his damn job -”

“It caught us all by surprise, Sam,” Carol says, rubbing her eyes.

“Yeah, except he was supposed to be the one who wasn’t caught by surprise,” Maria says. “That’s why he was Director, because he used to claim he was a futurist, he was supposed to predict this bullshit. Except he didn’t.”

“He’s _one man_.” Steve says.

“There’s nothing to be done right now,” Stephen says, and Steve is _done_.

“You _know_ what the Skrulls do to prisoners, Stephen,” he says, whirling around, throwing his bowl in the sink. “If it were me you’d all be busting your asses, did you even _try_?”

“There’s nothing we can do, Steve. Manhattan is overrun, that’s why we’re _here_ and not _there -_ ”

“He was being manipulated,” Steve roars to no one in particular. “Are you all just – really? You just write him off as a failure, and that’s it? He was being manipulated, and you’re all – cowards,” he decides.

“Listen up, Cap,” Logan says, and he’s standing now, too, “You don’t know what it’s been like. You don’t know how many people we’ve lost. You don’t get to judge us. You _weren’t there._ ” 

“You don’t leave someone behind,” Steve hisses.

“You just,” Sam says, “what _is_ it with you and him. He screwed us all over, Steve.”

“This isn’t about me,” Steve snarls. “You don’t _leave someone behind._ ”

“You’re such a hypocrite,” Peter says quietly. “You were ready to kill him, Cap.”

“I KNOW,” Steve yells, and everyone freezes.

He sees them look at him, sees how he must look, angry and tired and snapping.

He doesn’t care.

“I know,” he says again, and his voice is returning to something approaching a normal level. “But I’m not going to stand by while he’s – tortured in a hole somewhere. He doesn’t deserve that.”

“He’d’a left you,” Sam says.

“Well,” Steve says, crossing to the arms locker, “we’ll never know, will we.”

“Steve, don’t,” Maria says. “You don’t understand how bad it is in the city, they’ll shoot you on sight -”

“I’ll dodge,” he says, wrenching open the gun cabinet. “I’m going to get him,” he says, and he’s proud of how angry he sounds and pleased with how they’re shrinking away from him. “Either help me or piss off.”

“Take what you need,” Carol says, and she turns to go back upstairs.

“Really?” Steve says to her retreating back. “You’re really just gonna stay here and cower?”

“They won, Steve,” she says without turning around, already padding up the stairs. “He’s probably dead already.”

They watch him, in uneasy silence, as he drifts down to the lower levels, as he packs. He swaps his massive pack for a small one, and he takes food enough for a few days, gear for Tony. He raids their medical bay locker and takes antibiotics and more painkillers than he hopes he’ll really need. He swaps his AR-7 for a real bolt-action for hunting (he hopes he won’t need it, but you never know). He takes a real pad, and one of the ultra-compact sleeping rolls, and a real jacket. He stuffs a handful of flashbangs into the top, clips some pulse grenades onto his belt, and grabs a bunch of bricks of C-4 with detonators.

“Does anyone know where my shield is?” Steve says.

“Stark gave it to the Skrull,” Sam says quietly.

“Fine,” Steve says, and he grabs a shotgun and fills up the rest of the ammo pouches on his belt. At least he’ll get it back when he gets there.

“You should rest first,” Strange says. “You’re going to encounter a lot of resistance once you get closer to the city. It’s a mess.”

“Noted,” Steve snaps. “Get out of my way.”

“I can’t believe you,” Peter says quietly. “You just came back. You’re gonna get yourself killed trying to save him.”

“’Least I’ll be doing something right this time,” Steve says.

 


	19. The Good Soldier

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here. It's extra-long. You're welcome.

Steve tells himself this is what he’s going to do.

He finds some instant coffee in one of the cabinets and settles himself at the kitchen table. He forces himself to the task at hand, compresses his reality to maps spread out before him, on patterns and infiltration strategies and recon, not wild _what-if-he’s-dead_ ’s and _how-could-this-happen_ ’s and _she’s-dead-she’s-dead-she’s-dead_ ’s.

The maps make it abundantly clear that this is incredibly ill advised.

He pores over his materials, scribbled and highlighted in Carol’s journalist scrawl. It’s mostly guesswork, with a fraction of concrete information from the first few weeks from Carol’s forays into New York airspace and from Stephen (before they put up some kind of mystical energy barrier that made it impossible for him to teleport in and out). He’d give anything for real-time intelligence right about now.

It’s a mess, half the subway lines are flooded and the ones that aren’t, they’re using for some kind of generator. The bridges are down, too, scribbled out in sharpie one by one, except the Tappan Zee, and he gets the impression that any way he goes, he’s liable to be shot at. Fine. _Suicide mission_ , Peter had said, and the words bounce around in his skull and he studies furiously and plans his entry in through the red line from the North.

3 hours in, he’s slumping in his chair, rubbing at his eyes in the half-flicker of the candle (Carol runs the only generator, they save the gas for the getaway vehicle), murmurs and voices drifting up from the basement.

They want him to stay. They want him to tell them what to do. They want him to fix this.

Steve wants to retire. 

He thinks that maybe he doesn’t care if he comes back from this.

He puts his head down, just for a minute, lets his eyes fall shut –

 

\- - -

 

_Steve doesn’t want to be here._

_Tony hasn’t shaved in what looks like weeks. He’s lying on the bed, propped on an elbow, a bottle of Bacardi half-tipped to his lips. “You don’t understand,” he’s slurring. “I have to.” He mumbles the words out, their shapes clumsy in his mouth, and then he spills rum all over his collar._

_He’s drunk enough that the whole damn room smells like alcohol._

_“Tony, stop,” he spits, feeling more than a little desperate, tired of Tony’s one man wolf pack act, tired of this back-and-forth they do, tired of watching this_ happen. _“What is_ wrong _with you,” he says. “You had everything, you’re the most powerful man in the whole goddamn world and you’re throwing it away. Why.”_

_Tony goes in for another swig in lieu of a response, and Steve knocks the bottle out of his hands._

_“I want an_ answer _,” he roars, and he might be yelling, but there’s no one to hear them do this. It’s just them, alone in this shitty hotel room, and no one else is going to do this if Steve doesn’t._

_No one else wants to._

_“Or what,” Tony says. “Gonna beat me up? You know I’m no match for you without my armor.”_

Gonna put me out of my misery, _is what Steve hears._

_He’s wasting his time._

_“A man has to want to be helped,” he says, and his voice is raw. “Let me know when you do.”_

_Steve walks away._

_His feet are carrying him down the hallway, and he hates how Tony doesn’t fucking care what happens to him, he hates that it’s gotten this bad and no one noticed –_ he _didn’t notice,_ damn _it, Steve – and he hates that somehow he’s lost the ability to be rational where Tony is concerned, and –_

_Tony is killing himself, and Steve is letting him._

_He slams his fist into the wall so hard it buckles._

_Steve thinks maybe he should be better than this._

\- - -

 

“Steve.”

He brushes his hair out of his eyes and sits up, an ache in his back and his face feeling lopsided.

Carol is leaning against the counter, a spoon in her mouth, her hair sparkling in the light pouring in from the wide window above the sink. She’s in sweats and a t-shirt, pouring him a mug of something that smells a lot like real coffee, thick and smooth and the nicest thing he thinks he’s ever smelled –

She slides into the chair across from him, her eyes downturned, and rests her elbows on the table.

“You should go in from the north,” she says, as if they’re on speaking terms. “We think they’re using Lower Bay to run ops – they’ve got Aquatic units that patrol the coast, we’re not sure what for. The other option is looping around from the East, but you’d be going in blind, we don’t have any information about what sort of shape the Bronx is in, but it’s probably bad. They’ve got a net around the city, all the tunnels are locked down, and you don’t really have a chance with the bridges unless you crawl over underneath – honestly, it might just be easiest to take a boat across.”

Steve is doing his best to wake himself up for this, but he’s hovering between disbelief that she’s helping him and gratefulness that she’s helping him and settles for sipping his coffee so he doesn’t have to say anything. He watches her, as she straightens a little, shuffles off sleep, blinks red out of her eyes.

“You could drive as far as the Tappan Zee and hump it from there, I guess -”

“I’m not asking you for your damn truck,” Steve says, and his voice sounds more like a growl than he really intends it to. “I’ll hike. It’s only two days.”

“Can you not be an asshole for a minute,” she snaps, “there’s a bike in the barn, just shut up and take it, we can spare a couple of gallons of gas.”

They stare at each other, and Steve feels like an asshole.

“Ok,” he says finally. “I’m sorry. Thanks. I’m tired, I. Sorry.”

“It happens,” she says stiffly.

Steve lowers his eyes. “Yeah,” he agrees, feeling mildly ashamed.

“I wish you’d stay,” she says quietly. “We’d be a lot better off with you here.”

“I wish you’d done this two months ago so I didn’t have to,” he says, utterly weary, and Carol sighs and presses her lips together into a thin line.

“I wasn’t kidding,” she says, low in her voice, looking down at the table. “I don’t know why he’d still be alive by now. I wasn’t going to risk my whole force for one man.”

Steve stares very intently at his arm, at the dirt ground into his skin. “Well, you won’t have to,” he says quietly. “Just me.”

Carol looks at him like she’s been slapped, and Steve downs his mug and goes back to planning his desperate little assault.

She pulls the map out from under his elbows.

“Here,” she says. “Listen. I’ll show you how to get out.”

Steve listens.

 

\- - -

 

He takes the bike.

It’s not what he’s used to, but it’s enough. It’s got a muffler and tires, it’s not rusting through. Steve rides a little too fast around country roads, keeps to the shadows of the dead trees, and _goes._ It doesn’t feel right, having the pack where his shield should be, but there’s nothing he can do, so he presses on. The wind whips his hair into his face where it’s poking out from under his balaclava, and he grips the handlebars until his knuckles are white.

He can’t remember the last time he told Sharon he loved her.

He thinks maybe he shouldn’t have lied when he didn’t anymore.

There are things he should have told her, he thinks, as he passes cars with their doors gaping open and snow drifted onto their seats. She wanted to marry him, he thinks, as he sails past houses with roofs caving in with the weight of long-un-shoveled snow, and more with the windows boarded tight. There are things that should have been said. 

He thinks of Sharon’s smile and her voice and her jibing and her fierce strength and he wonders why he can’t muster anything more than a dull, aching pain in mourning for her. He thinks that maybe after all they’ve shared, it should be more acute.

It’s not.

There’s no time for him to mourn in this world, he thinks.

(Tony doesn’t have time.)

He rides, and does his best not to focus on anything but his immediate reality, the cold and the burnt-out houses and the boarded-up houses and the occasional body on the side of the road.

_Welcome to New York, Steve._

He can’t help but think it feels like coming home to die.

\- - -

Steve starts to get nervous when the trees start to give way to residential areas and he catches a glimpse of the interstate walls. He doesn’t dare go over on the highway without a permit, he’d call far too much attention to himself and he’d be hemmed in if they tried to apprehend him, but he feels so exposed, here. Informants are popular, Carol had explained, it’s why they had to bolt so far outside the city, where no one knows they’re there, or they’d have Skrulls descending on them in battalions. They’re not bad to the ones who cooperated, apparently – they’ve got a volunteer service set up, they’ve decided to avail themselves of the best thinkers Earth’s got to offer, if they’re willing.

If they’re not, well. Carol has quoted casualties to him.

He knows he’s getting close, because he smells the water, the grime, and the air is colder as it comes off the river in raw gusts. He’s just scanning when he sees it, smoke, barely a wisp, behind another wide expanse of trees ahead. _People_ , he thinks with trepidation, and he’s trying to decide whether or not they’re going to shoot at him when he comes around the bend and almost falls of his bike because of the stench.

There’s a hole, a gaping hole carved out of the ground, meters of raw clay open to the air, at least a 50 feet long, and the _smell_ has him clamping an icy hand over his face and trying not to retch. He slows, to see, breathing through his mouth, and he already knows what he’s going to find, because it’s just the same and he’s back at Dachau, back in the snow –  

There are bodies. Dozens and dozens of them, thrown into the hole, piled on top of one another, a tangled heap of limbs and maggots and snow melting into slush. They’re rotting, some of them, and others look frozen, and there’s skin and muscle and decay and tiny little fingers curled into fists –

He leans back from the edge, breathes into his hand for 20 seconds, because everything is awful, and nothing is how it should be, and it’s come to this, mass graves in Nyack, people rotting like animals in the wind and rain.

He wonders if Nick is rotting in one of these back in Pennsylvania.

He floors it, wondering what they’ve all done to deserve this. 

 

\- - -

 

It takes him 2 hours in all, but he makes it to the Tappan Zee without incident, even though his heart feels like it’s clenching and unclenching in his chest as he slows and gets off his bike. Steve hides it under a particularly sprawling pine tree by a large transformer a few miles from the bridge piling, unslings the shotgun from his shoulder, and starts the long scramble down to the shores of the Hudson.

It’s off to his left, less than a mile, but there’s a block or two of marinas and private docks and vacation homes between it and him. He hasn’t seen a soul outside thus far, so he chances it, winds down along the water. There aren’t as many swanky estates on the eastern side, but it’s easy enough to find a dock that looks suitably neglected. There are plenty of motorboats, but he’s worried about gas, so he opts for 10-foot rowboat bobbing at the end. The oars are already resting in the bottom of the boat.

He’s stealing it when he hears something moving behind him.

He drops the rope he’s holding, and he barely catches a glimpse of a red blur diving behind the shed at the foot of the dock as he spins around. He raises the shotgun.

“Come out,” he says. “Hands up.”

There’s a tapping sound, and a whump, and then Steve is entirely certain his life is a cosmic joke, because Deadpool shuffles out, hands up and fingers splayed wide.

“You have 30 seconds to explain how the hell you happen to be in the same square mile as I am before I take your head off,” Steve says.

“That’s not very nice,” Wade says, and he pulls himself up to perch on one of the massive wooden posts jutting up from the platform of the dock. “I can be where I want, it’s a free country, you know – land of the dead, home of the Skrulls. I’m not here to _kill_ you, you just got un-dead, what kind of superhero would I be if I re-killed Captain America?”

“You’re not a _superhero_ , you’re a mercenary.” Steve hisses, “And I’m not Captain America.”

“Gee, thanks, Cap,” Wade says, and it might be Steve’s imagination, but he looks like he’s deflating a little. “You say the nicest things. Ok, well, identity crisis, been there –”

“15 seconds,” Steve says, trying to decide whether Deadpool would sink or float if he knocked him into the river.

“Ok, I have a thing for tall blonds, so yeah, I was following you. Strength in numbers, right? It’s a Skrull’s world, and I’m the farthest thing from green there is –”

“Why were you following me, Wade,” Steve growls.

“You got me,” Wade says, shifting from foot to foot, “I’ve lost myself. I’m nothing without you, Cap –“

“5 seconds, Wade, or I blow you right back to Canada – ”

“– Also, I kinda have a price on my head. I might have ripped some throats out, and the throats may have belonged to Her-Holiest-Bitch’s favorite generals. Because duh, _aliens_ , why would you _not_ cut them up and see what color they bleed, right –”

Steve doesn’t hear the rest of Wade’s explanation, because there’s a humming behind him, a dull mechanical groan, and he turns around, wondering what new horror this will be.

There’s a ship, larger than a human helicopter and armed to the teeth with what look like plasma cannons, lumbering through the sky, heavy and silent, along the far bank. He’s impossibly still, he swears he can hear his heart beating, and Carol warned him about this sort of thing, didn’t she. It’s got no engines he can see, just these purple glowing lesions on the bottom that glow and spin and seem to be some kind of bastardization of repulsor tech. It ghosts along the coast opposite them, swivels and dives closer, projects a massive purple beam over the trees.

Sweeping.

“Oh, hey, that’s them,” Wade says.

Steve is just about done.

“You son of a bitch,” he breathes, turning back around. “What are they even paying you with?” It’s just like him, he doesn’t believe in anything, he fought for S.H.I.E.L.D. in the streets, slashing his friends’ throats while Steve was grinding Tony into the concrete. “Think they’d go away if I left your bleeding corpse for them?” he says darkly, and he’s only half-kidding. He steps forward and he’d be trembling with fury if he wasn’t better-trained, but Wade is just dancing out of the way, and Steve is inches away from calmly and efficiently dispatching him and leaving to regenerate in the muddy grime on the shore.

“No, they don’t like me enough to pay me,” Wade says sincerely. “They’re looking for me, they’ll scan this shore when they come back around, we’d better get moving, chop, chop, Cap – ”

“We-are-not-a- _team_ ,” Steve yells. “ _We_ are not going anywhere.”

“Yeah, ok, but maybe we could be? And you know, I help you and maybe you could put in a word for me with the Vagabond Post-Skrull Avengers, ‘cause references, hard to get in this economic climate –”

“No,” Steve says in utter disbelief. “You were trying to _kill_ me when we last met, remember? You don’t even know what I’m doing, do you, you’re just a poacher now –”

“Details,” Wade says, waving one of his hands absently. He’s got something in the other, some kind of metal thing the size of a tablet, but round, metal and twisting wires and it’s casting a purple glow onto Wade’s mask as he fiddles with it. “Poacher is such an ugly word. I’m useful, I can eviscerate people and stuff, I can get you into the city anywhere you want to go. No fuss, no muss, no blood, no guts – unless you want there to be guts, I guess, I’m into it –”

“Why should I trust you?” He’s trying, he really is, but Wade Wilson is certifiably insane and Steve is having a hard time getting past the bloodstains soaked into his costume.

Deadpool sighs an exasperated sigh. “You’re killing me, Cap. They have no sense of humor and they try to vaporize me on sight now,” he says. “I don’t think they like fireworks, they took it kinda personally.”

Steve doesn’t know when his life turned into this.

“Look, I know a guy, he does tacos in the part of Hell’s Kitchen they haven’t locked down, I can hook you up.” Steve just stares, and Deadpool shrugs. “Whatever, I’m going anyway.”

The gunship turns and slogs through the air in a lazy arc, and then it’s on their shore, not a mile away.

“How does that work,” Steve says, starting to feel frantic, nodding at the thing in Wade’s hands. He assumes it’s some kind of teleportation device, judging by the way it’s throwing out purple light in a 3-foot projection around Wade.

“Shhh, you’ll ruin the magic,” Wade says. “Deus ex machina, it’s ready, come here and hold me. We’ll hug it out.”

“Tell me what it does,” Steve presses. 

“It’s an Infinite Improbability Drive,” Wade chirps. “Liberated Skrull tech. Really, move your ass, you need to be grounded, the first time I used this I was wet and I spent 16 hours twitching in the gutter.”

The gunship is drifting towards them.

“Fuck _,_ ” Steve says, and jogs the length of the dock.

Deadpool smells like blood and – _Mexican food_ , and he wriggles and yanks Steve’s arm up from where it’s resting at his side and winds it around his waist. “Physical proximity is essential for the success of any relationship,” he says, very seriously.

“Avengers Tower,” Steve says, gritting his teeth. “Get me there.”

“Oh, good, Skrull-baiting,” Wade says, “I think you missed some stuff, Cap, it’s a Skrull pad, now. Don’t worry, I’m not judging you, we all have our baser urges.”

“I’m going hunting,” Steve says.

“Approved,” Wade says. “So about the Avengers thing, right –“

Steve pushes the button Wade’s thumb has been resting on so he doesn’t have to hear the rest.

There’s utter silence, then, and the docks are disintegrating. Steve feels the air around him _tugging_ , like it’s pulling his matter along. All he sees is a blinding purple-white for a minute, and Deadpool is laughing next to him.

And then the wind is whipping his eyes again, howling in his ears, and they’re 90 stories up.

 

 - - -

 

He steps away from Wade, who’s cackling like an idiot, and it’s a good thing he staggers back, not forward, because they’re on top of the tower, the highest balcony, and Steve can see everything.

The _sky._

It’s so much worse here, he’d thought it was bad in the woods, but the sun’s entirely blotted out here, it’s green haze and rust-colored haze smeared across the sky, mixing together to form this muddy pall.

He steps forward, because how can he _not,_ and it’s alien and terrifying and entirely overwhelming. It’s not the city he knows. They’ve built, and they’ve destroyed, and the skyline is _wrong_. They’ve filled what must have been gaping holes from the battle with strange, spindly towers, and they’ve clamped hardware onto most of the major skyscrapers. There are platforms, now, landing pads above ground level, a second layer of the city suspended between all of the highest structures, enough that he can’t see down to street-level. There’s a massive statue of a woman – a Skrull woman, proud and cruel and lifting her arms to the sky in the center of Midtown proper. It’s a city of the air, now. There are hundreds of ships, carriers and patrols and individual fliers whizzing past in great metallic streams. There are smaller stations suspended in midair, too, collections of vertical cylinders hovering high above the tallest of the buildings. Beacons of some sort, maybe, or defense towers, he’s not sure.

The tower’s been changed, too, infected, more of the same metal pieces grafted onto the sides of the main building. They look like sinister tumors that have pushed their way out of the glass and steel, strange and curved, and it occurs to Steve they probably scrapped their _ships_ to do it. It’s all backlit by the weird purple energy, and the base of the tower has been widened, like it’s sunk its claws in at street level. It’s elegant, if harsh, and they’ve somehow managed to assimilate the smaller two towers into the main one and build another giant landing platform between them. There are ships lined up down there, fighters and some Quinjet-sized and what looks like a carrier.

Tony’s tower, headquarters of the new regime.

“Aw, man,” Wade is saying, as Steve keeps standing, horrified, at the edge,  “I thought we’d have like five minutes, at least.”

“What?” Steve says weakly, because everything is terrible, and it was _two months_ , he was dead for four and they did this in two – 

“This thing always attracts Skrulls like crazy, it’s like catnip,” Wade says, and then the alarms go off. 

Every system in the tower is blaring, and some from outside that Steve doesn’t recognize. The lights have changed, too, the purple is a red, now, spreading out under their feet in pulsating lines on the flight deck. The nearest hovering station lights up, and Steve gets what it’s for now, because a mass of probes, or fighters, or _something_ dart out of ports lining the sides, and make straight for the tower in a tight swarm.

“You knew this was going to happen?” Steve asks, because this is better and worse than every plan he’d come up with to get _in,_ and he’ll be damned if they catch him before he’s even set foot in the tower, and fucking _Wade_. “What were you thinking,” he says, but he’s so overwhelmed by this wicked landscape that he doesn’t know how to be angry right now.  

“It’s cool, man,” Wade says, “I got you covered.”

“You do?” Steve says, more and more confused all the time, and then Wade is snatching the shotgun out of his arms and diving off the balcony.

“ _Hey_ ,” Steve says, but it’s too late, and it’s all he can do to rush back to the side to watch him fall. The drones swoop in after him, followed up by a few Skrulls on individual open-air craft. Steve shrinks back, and he’s reaching in his pack for the other rifle, but they don’t even see him, it seems, because they’re rocketing down to street level as Wade falls.

“I be-liieeeeve I can fly,” Wade is belting, between whoops, as he pumps the shotgun and fires into the swarm. “I believe I can touch the – _shit_ –” There’s smoke trailing behind him, thick clouds of red and black, he must have loosed his signal canisters, and the _ego_ on him, even now –

He pulls a parachute Steve didn’t realize he was wearing when he’s about 10 stories up. The drones are shooting plasma bursts, and they’re quick to riddle it with holes. Still, he seems to be doing ok, because after he disappears under one of the huge landing platforms, Steve still hears weapons fire tearing off down the street to the north.

Steve swears, because Deadpool is a shit, his offensive weapon of choice is gone, and his convenient way out is running away down what’s left of Park Avenue. He needs to move, he needs to maybe hide in the ship behind him, there are probably going to be Skrulls piling out onto the balcony to descend on him any moment, _think_ , Steve–

The alarms stop.

Steve watches what’s left of the drones zoom back up, watches them settle themselves back into their ports, watches as the lights beneath his feet fade back to purple. The Skrull fliers don’t fly back.

No one comes rushing out the balcony doors to apprehend him.

Steve yanks off his balaclava and walks into the penthouse, not daring to believe his luck just yet.

 

\- - -

 

There’s no one there.

There aren’t any guards, not that he can see, and he drifts through the kitchen, through the utterly sterile common area, past the dining room, down towards the bedrooms. It doesn’t look any different, not really – the furniture’s the same, but it’s not lived-in, and he wonders if they’re using the sub-levels as their main control center. It’s what he would do.

“K’arr’n,” a sharp voice says behind him, and Steve freezes, mid-step.

He doesn’t turn around. The rifle is still in his bag, and the flashbangs are shoved in at the top, but he could dive behind the dividing wall between the breakfast nook and the living room, knowing Tony, it’s probably reinforced with steel -

“Where are you going, my _love_?”

Steve turns around.

It’s a Skrull, the first one he’s seen up close in years. A woman, tall and statuesque, wearing this ridiculous leather thing that barely covers her, her dark brown hair loose and spilling all over her shoulders. She’s got the chin ridges, the ears, but her features are so familiar, so harsh, _so_ close to–

It’s Skrull-Jessica. The Queen. 

She’s leaning out of Tony’s bedroom, what used to be, anyway, (what’s good enough for Tony Stark is apparently good enough for alien royalty, Steve thinks) and then she’s loping towards him. She strides, and her green feet are bare on the hardwood. She’s dropping her cape and toeing up to him and _wrapping her hands around the back of his neck –_

She looks up into his face, and it’s all he can do to keep his expression neutral. Her fingers come to rest on his cheek, on his lips, and Steve wills his heart to calm the hell down. She twists her lips in what Steve thinks is amusement, studies his features, and he doesn’t know what she’s doing, until her face breaks out into a cruel smile and she speaks through pointed teeth.

“Is this your game today,” she purrs. “Two can play, K’arr’n,” she half-hisses, and then she’s changing, her skin is evening out into a light tan, and her ears are shrinking, and it _is_ Jessica, then, standing in front of him wearing rubies and pressing herself into his body–

She’s all over him.

She thinks he’s his imposter.

Steve wasn’t expressly trained as a spy, but he’s run enough operations in his life and been around enough of them that he can pretend. He opens his mouth to respond, but she’s pressing a finger over his lips, she’s hissing in his ear –

“That’s the third time this month he’s base-jumped off my tower,” she says, “You’re supposed to stop this sort of thing. Perhaps I should find a new chief of Security.”

“It’s taken care of,” Steve says, trying not to stiffen under her touch, they’re obviously lovers, or something, _play the part, Steve–_

She thumbs at the strap of his pack. “Like you’ve taken care of the Avengers?” she murmurs, low and dangerous, and it’s abundantly clear that she’s mocking him. “I want his head on a plate,” she whispers. “I want to see if his body will grow back around it.” She rakes his fingers down his neck, and he hates it, he hates it, he hates it -

“You’ll have it,” he says, because he doesn’t know what else to say.

“You’re wearing the human’s face again. What are you up to,” she breathes, hot in his ear. “Skulking off to detention again? I thought I told you not to toy with your prey _,_ ” she whispers. And Steve’s chest is cold, his mind is racing, because she’s talking about him, about his face, about Tony,  _improvise,_ Steve-

“I have new intelligence,” Steve murmurs, and he’s flying blind, he has no idea what to say, he has to get to Tony. “I think I’ve found them for you.”

“Oh, I see,” she says and she’s digging her nails into his skin, she’s dropping his pack onto the ground. “How many times is that, now?”

“I’m certain,” Steve says, trying with every fiber of his being to keep his voice as level as hers is. “You’ll have them -”

“Stop,” she hisses. “I haven’t forgiven you. I haven’t forgotten.” She’s sliding her hands over his back. “I do like this body,” she says, running her fingers over his chest, and he wants to throw her against the wall, but he needs to use this, doesn’t he – “but if you think you’re going to have his and mine, you’re sorely mistaken.”

She's talking about Tony. She's talking about his imposter. She's talking about - 

Steve almost loses it.

Steve pulls himself together.

“I apologize,” he manages, as if he’s not choking on the words, and then she’s kissing him, and Steve is absolutely horrified.

She slides her long fingers into his hair, and he can feel the points of her nails digging into his scalp, and her _tongue_ is in his mouth, and it’s nothing he ever wanted to do. “Don’t misunderstand,” she murmurs, pulling away to nip at his jaw, “I’ll keep you around as long as it pleases me.” She’s sucking at his lip, then, sinking her teeth like needles into the flesh of his mouth. He tastes the blood as it wells up on his tongue, and he can’t help himself, he _winces_ -

“What’s wrong,” she snarls, as Steve stands there, entirely too shocked to move as she laves his neck with her tongue. “I thought you only enjoy carnal pleasures when blood is drawn.” She bares her teeth in a toothy grin, and she's leaning up to bite at the hollow of his throat - 

The elevator dings behind her, and Steve just about sobs in unspeakable gratefulness.

“Not now,” she barks, without turning around, but Steve looks up just in time to see another Skrull step out onto the landing. This one’s male, and he picks his blond head up, tall and built with blue, blue eyes -

His _eyes_. They’re Steve’s.  

“Veranke,” the Skrull says, and then he says something in Skrull and Veranke pulls away from Steve and turns to look behind her.

“K’arr’n?” she says in disbelief. And nothing is ever easy, is it, because the Skrull is punching a button next to the elevator, then, and the fucking alarms go off again. Steve wipes his mouth on the back of his hand, and then she’s turning back to look at him, her mouth warping into a snarl, her eyes mad with fury –

Steve takes the opportunity to punch her squarely in the face, because he's  _done._

Her nose cracks under his fist, he thinks it might be the most satisfying thing he’s done since he’s woken up to this ridiculously cruel world. She crumples, and her head hits the ground with a knock. Steve is itching for a fight, and his body is miles ahead of him, he’s already sidestepping when K’arr’n – Steve assumes that’s his name – comes barreling down the hallway, pulling this enormous dagger out of a sheath on his thigh –

Steve ducks as the dagger sings past his head, K’arr’n’s swipe _inches_ away from his right eye. Steve dives at him, wraps his arms around his body and tackles him to the wall, the drywall buckling beneath both of their weights. He’s kicking, but Steve stomps on his foot and slams his arm into the wall once, twice, three times until he drops his blade and it clatters to the floor. Steve looks at it for a fraction of a second too long, because K’arr’n brains him with a massive green-fisted right hook, and his ears are ringing as he’s dragged up – 

Steve feels the blow connect with his jaw, and his head knocks back against the wall before he’s being kicked in the chest and thrown through it entirely. He lands, hard, on his back, gasping for breath, covered in dust and tasting blood in his throat. He’s strong, this asshole, stronger than Steve, maybe, and he doesn’t know how long he’s going to last in a fight like this. He’s wasting time, if the alarm’s been sounded, they’re probably on their way up, he has to _move._ K’arr’n is scrambling on top of him, then, wrapping hands around his neck and squeezing, and Steve’s eyes are tearing up, the blood is pounding in his ears –

He gets a fist up in a desperate uppercut, and K’arr’n’s jaw cracks. He loses his grip for a second, and it’s all the time Steve needs to scramble over Tony’s enormous bed and tear out through the door. He scoops his pack up as he runs to the elevator, rubbing at his throat. He skids to a halt, jabs at the button, and the doors need to fucking open because K’arr’n is getting up. Steve hears stomping, coming from the kitchen corridor, down next to Jarvis’ rooms by the stairs, _dammit –_

He’s just turned around to jab at the button again when he hears it, hissing through the air at neck level, and he sidesteps and shoots his arm up, decades of instinct and training kicking in all at once –

He closes his hand around it, smooth and light and hard as steel.

His shield.

It would have taken his neck off if he hadn’t snatched it out of the air.

He whirls around, and K’arr’n looks stunned, panting in the doorway, his arm still extended and his mouth dripping a deep green onto the rug, and the doors are dinging open, thank fuck –

“This is mine,” Steve growls, ducking inside the elevator. “Try it,” he says. “I dare you.”

“You’re already dead, Captain,” K’arr’n spits, bending to pick up his queen, and then the doors are rolling shut.

 

\- - -

 

He locks the doors as soon as he’s gotten in and he silently thanks Tony for all the manual safeguards he’s built into his engineering. The alarm is blaring in the elevator too, and Steve leans against the wall in the harsh wash of the emergency lights and presses the button that will take him to the detention level in the upper levels of the sub-basement. It’s where he’d keep his prisoners, too, if he were –

He’s not.

The light on the panel beeps, flashing red. It’s a different interface than he remembers, though, and it chirps out what he assumes is an error message in Skrull.

He swears, because he doesn’t have time for this bullshit.

He raises his shield, bashes the top hatch open, and reaches up with bloody hands to wrench himself up. It’s a tight squeeze, with the pack, but he scrambles up on unsteady legs, kicking the hatch shut under him in case they try to pry the doors open.

He really doesn’t want to do it this way, but he doesn’t have a choice, because there are 92 stories between him and where he needs to be, and.

He closes his eyes, gathers himself up, and then reaches out and swipes at the cables with his shield.

He’s falling then, riding the top of the car down, desperately trying to balance his weight on unsteady legs. It’s exactly the last thing Steve wants to be doing to his body right now, but it’s not like the universe has ever really taken his comfort into consideration. He can’t hear anything over the air rushing in his ears, and the white numbers painted onto the inside of the shaft blur together as it picks up speed. He forces himself to his knees, smashes his shield into the roof, and presses himself down on his stomach as the car shudders beneath him. It’s not going to do much, but it’ll help, at least, and he won’t have broken legs–

The car groans and shudders and jerks violently underneath him, and it’s all he can do to clutch the handlebars on the hatch desperately. There’s a deafening hiss, and then it’s coasting a few levels and it _stops_ abruptly instead of crashing. It’s jarring, and something like whiplash, and the jolt is enough to bash his forehead into the titanium.

He lies there for a minute, marveling that Tony had the foresight to install emergency shocks in his elevator (of course he did) and then he picks himself up, feeling like he’s been thrown against a wall of bricks. He wrenches his shield out of the car and looks around.

Level L, the stencil above the door reads. Three more levels to go, then.

Steve huffs out a sigh, slings his shield high up on his arm, and reluctantly starts to climb the ladder down to detention.

 

\- - -

 

Steve sets a breaching charge on the doors, because he’s just about dead on his feet from the climb after that impact and really doesn’t want to wrench 400 pounds of hydraulics open with a metal Frisbee. He crawls back up a few meters, and blows them wide open.

That’s when the shouting starts.

He slides the rest of the way down, punches through the gaping hole shield-first, and then he’s assaulted by energy weapons fire.

Steve is not in the mood.

The great thing about plasma weapons, he thinks, is that he can deflect most of it back onto his pursuers without even breaking a sweat. He’s in the main part of detention, a hub that connects the four main corridors, and there are 6 of them guarding the far corridor. He takes two of them down with deflected bolts, charges two of the other ones and brains them both with the shield. One of the remaining two is yelling down the far corridor behind him, and Steve tosses the shield in a wide arc, watches it bounce off the wall and slice off one of his arms. His companion looks appropriately horrified, and Steve lunges forward the last meter, and picks it up off the ground and slices his head cleanly off in one smooth, uninterrupted motion.

He flicks green blood off of the shield with a snap of his wrist, and then he darts down the corridor they were clustered around. All the cells are empty and dark, and Steve is almost worried he’s picked the wrong one. But the lights come on as he runs, and then he rounds the corner and sees them.

There are two Skrull guards standing outside the last cell at the end of the hall, and they’ve barely raised their weapons when Steve sends his shield flying down the hallway to crush both of their skulls in quick succession. He’s far beyond non-lethally disarming his opponents.  It’s the only cell with an active barrier, a thick, buzzing white-blue wall of static that Steve can’t see through. He wrenches his shield out of the wall, leans in to do the retina scan, and then the energy barrier is falling (they’ve used his face for this) and he’s stepping into the cell.

And his heart, his heart is twisting in his chest to look at the man chained in the corner. 

Tony.

There’s commotion on the floor above them, shouting, and metallic banging like maybe they’ve gotten the elevator working again and they’re trying to get into the car. He should be worried about it, but he can’t, there’s nothing in his head but horror, because he doesn’t know what he expected, but it wasn’t _this._

This is worse, this is so much worse than he’d thought it would be.

Tony is on his knees, his head bowed to his chest, shackles shining on his ankles, his wrists drawn up above his head by silver chains. He’s entirely naked, and so terribly thin, thinner than Steve can ever remember seeing him, the strong lines of his musculature dulled, a suggestion of something that used to be toned. His skin is ruined, he’s all deep cuts and bruises on top of bruises and _blood_ , so much blood, shining burns carved deep into his chest, his sides, and half of his fingernails are missing -

Steve doesn’t know who he thought he was fooling when he told himself he was prepared for this.

“Tony,” he says, and he can barely hear his own voice.

Tony is terribly still.

Steve sinks to his knees, and Tony doesn’t look up, and he reaches a tentative hand out to tilt Tony’s chin up, because he’s not dead, he can’t fucking be dead after all of this -

Tony’s eyes are open.

“Tony?” he tries again, and his voice is leaving him, then. Because he sees, how Tony’s face is filthy and streaked with glistening tear tracks, how there are layer upon layer of bruises on his jaw under the stubble, how there’s dried blood caked under his nose, how his lips are cracked and bleeding and stretched open around this awful metal gag, how there’s glistening _filth_ all over his chin and a collar around his neck, how –

How his eyes aren’t looking at anything at all.

“Oh my god,” Steve says, and he fumbles around to undo the buckle on the gag, crumples it in a fist and hurls it into the far corner. “Tony, say something,” he says, and the corners of his mouth are raw and pinched from the fucking thing, and he reaches his other hand up to touch Tony’s face-

It’s the wrong thing to do.

Tony doesn’t say anything, he just flinches desperately away from Steve’s touch. His eyes glass over, bright and blue and wide with pain, and there’s a fresh tear running down through the grime on his cheek. He’s not looking at Steve, his eyes aren’t tracking right, his gaze is just fixed over Steve’s shoulder, he’s looking _nowhere_ , and the rest of his face is slack with terror like he’s trained himself not to see –

“Ok, it’s ok, you’re ok, we’re going, just, let me, I’m gonna,” Steve chants, and everything is so far from ok it’s staggering, but he has to say something or he’s going to lose it, because there’s gunfire somewhere above them, and they’re coming to kill them both, and _Tony._ His hands are shaking, he realizes, as he checks Tony’s pulse (thready) and his pupils (no concussion), so tight and small and swallowed up in the blue. He fumbles at Tony’s wrists for a moment, so terribly abused and bloodied (every inch of him is bloodied), but the cuffs are entirely smooth. He runs his fingers over them desperately, mad with frustration, because they feel like adamantium, and he can’t do anything about that. But then there’s a click, and there’s a seam, and the one he’s touching splits and hinges and falls away from Tony’s wrist.

It’s keyed to his biosignature.

He catches Tony’s arm as it falls, presses the pads of his trembling fingers to the rest of them and pulls them from Tony’s skin, and they’re _keyed to his biosignature,_ they’ve been using his fucking _face_ for this. Tony crumples into his lap like a rag doll and lies there, quaking with every breath he sucks in, and his skin is so _cold_ under Steve’s fingers. He tries to be gentle, tries not to touch the electrical burns on his back or what look like whip-weals on his side as he cradles Tony to his chest, but Tony presses his eyes shut like it’s all he knows how to do and bites his lip and goes limp as death, and he’s breathing in these terrible little gasps that rip at Steve’s chest, and –

Steve never wanted to have to do this.

“What did they do to you,” Steve says, and it’s halfway to a sob. They should have been here, they should have been here months ago, how long has it been since he’s seen the sun -

He feels in his pocket wildly for the morphine syringe, the precious morphine that will make Tony not feel anything for a blessed while, and presses the tab to his neck with a hiss. Tony doesn’t even flinch, and Steve caps it back up and stuffs it in his pocket and feels Tony shaking to pieces under his hands. 

“We’re leaving,” he says, and his voice is breaking. He reaches unsteadily under Tony’s knees and around his shoulders, hoists him to his chest as gently as he possibly can, the shield slung around his forearm in front of Tony’s head.

Steve is stepping into the hall and trying not to let himself feel anything or knock Tony’s feet on the door when he feels Tony’s fingers scrabbling on his shirt, and his voice rasps out of his throat like he’s forgotten how to use it.

“Please,” he’s saying, and his grip is barely even a grip, “just _._ ”

“It’s ok,” Steve says roughly, and he’s barely holding it together as it is, “grab my neck, I got you-”

“Don’t play with me,” Tony mumbles, “Just kill me this time, kill me, just.” And then the morphine is kicking in, his eyelids are drooping and he sags in Steve’s arms like he’s dead and he just hasn’t realized it yet.

Steve’s feels like his throat is closing up, because this isn’t fair, because Tony is begging him for death again, and they used to be people, didn’t they, free, and happy and Tony was so proud–

Steve thinks maybe he fucked this one up. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, I know. I'm sorry, I disappeared for like 2 weeks. This month has ben absolutely fucking insane, and I had to go out to Chicago to visit a dying relative, and then I had to come back, and now both of my parents are obscenely ill with the flu and I'm getting ready to go to Russia for 4 months, so I've been a little distracted. 
> 
> ANYWAY. 
> 
> I'm back now. I have no intention of abandoning this story. It was never abandoned. I'm just really bad at writing linear-ly and it all comes out in bursts and I just have so many feelings. 
> 
> P.S. I adore your comments. Really. They're like my favorite thing.
> 
> P.P.S. Here, [THIS](http://www.blogcdn.com/www.comicsalliance.com/media/2012/08/jeremyloveavengersconcepts20.jpeg) is what New York looks like. I know it's MCU. Use your imagination.
> 
> P.P.P.S. My betas, [AleaIactaEst49](http://archiveofourown.org/users/AleaIactaEst49) and [strictlyamess](http://archiveofourown.org/users/strictlyamess) are fucking amazing.


	20. Do No Harm

Steve runs.

He tears down the corridor, his heart pounding out of his chest, and Tony is crumpled against him, rasping out horrible wheezing breaths, bleeding on his shirt, lost in nightmares, Tony –

Tony thinks he did this.

This happened because Tony wanted him, and he had no idea. Tony trusted someone who stole his face, Tony thought- 

Tony thought his face could do things like this.

It all falls away, everything he’s been feeling. Because how can it _matter_ , how can he be a decent person and have it matter, petty things like betrayal and war and politics how they hated each other, how they had something and then didn’t, when Tony is bleeding like a stuck pig and he’s naked and he’s been used like this –

This was supposed to go differently. There would have been stilted conversation. Yelling, probably. Tony would have yelled at him, and if he’s honest, he would have yelled back. He wanted to yell. But Tony can’t fucking walk now, can he, they’ve done such a good job of doing what he wanted to do back at the mansion, what he wanted to do in the street at the end there, what Tony asked for.

He shouldn’t have been the one to do this. He shouldn’t have rushed to be the decent one. He didn’t want to see this. This was – obligation. Perfunctory. Decency for decency’s sake. It had nothing to do with Tony, nothing at all, it was just – duty. The right thing to do.

A debt, that’s all this was.

Because Tony hated him and hunted him down and threw out everything they’d ever worked for. And Steve –

Steve wanted to hate him right back.

But he feels Tony’s blood seeping through his shirt, and he hears him sucking in shuddering breaths and sees the marks that K’arr’n has made on his skin and thinks that maybe he doesn’t know anything at all.

Because it feels like there’s a goddamn hole in his chest.

He told himself he’d be impartial, that he could handle this. He’s seen men tortured. He’s seen Bucky tortured. He’s a _soldier_. He’s seen bodies rotting in the ground, men and women freezing to death in the snow. He’s watched people die, held them as they bled out onto his hands. He’s seen things that no one should ever have to see.

Tony, halfway to starving and beaten to a pulp, is another thing entirely. And Steve, Steve desperately wants to not care, wants to forget that he’s ever felt something more than hate for him, wants to forget those 10 years of impossibly fulfilling friendship (ruined), but –

Tony has always been another thing entirely, and Steve’s heart is in his throat, and he blinks tears out of his eyes and tells himself that he’s responsible for getting them both out of this.

Because there’s no one else to do it.

No one is coming to bail him out or back him up or jump out of a helicopter and lay down cover. It’s just them here, it’s only him, he has to stop feeling and start dragging himself back together and thinking like a soldier. Extraction, he knows how to do this, he needs to get them up to street level, out of the tower. Into the green-grey air and over the river, past the gunships and the patrols and the alarms–

He’s nowhere near prepared for an operation like this. He doesn’t have body armor, he doesn’t have his shotgun because fucking _Wade_ , and he doesn’t have any idea of where they’ll be coming from or what they’re even using this building for or how they’re going to get out. This is nothing but blind instinct and overwhelming terror and soul-crushing guilt twisting in his gut. He’s blind, and he can’t afford to be, he has to run, he has to–

Tony looks like he’s _dying,_ and Steve wants to ignore it, but he can’t help it, can’t help but think –

_This is what you wanted._

It rises in his throat like bile.

_Do it, Steve. Finish it._

He wanted this, once upon a time.

Steve bolts like he’s never bolted before, skids around corners, and Tony’s heavy in his arms. He’s dead on his feet, covered in blood, but it doesn’t matter, he can’t fail, this isn’t the fucking time. Because if he takes a bullet, if they get Tony again, _K’arr’n_ gets Tony again –

Steve is going to kill them both before that happens.

(There’s no reason he should care this much.)

He can’t take the elevator, there’s no way he’s climbing back up the shaft with Tony in his arms like this. They won’t come that way, they’re smarter than that. They’ll wait for him to crawl out, block the exits, they won’t chase after him like a rat in a cage, they didn’t win the war by being hasty and vindictive and _making it personal_ –

(K’arr’n made it personal, K’arr’n made it personal and it might as well have been Steve –)

Steve dashes down the far corridor, and the lights follow him as he moves. All the cells are dark here, too, Tony’s been the only prisoner, (the only _plaything_ ), and he can’t even afford to let himself be appalled right now, because he has to keep moving before they descend in full force –

Stairs, he’ll go up the stairs, one level up to the sub-garage, he’ll take the ramp, there will be vehicles he can steal (there have to be), they won’t send troops down the stairs, too narrow, too much of a bottleneck (please don’t let them send troops down the stairs). It’s one flight. They’ll make it.

(He’s one man, he’s one man against an army, and this used to be their home –)

He stops, in front of the stairwell, because he needs his hands, he needs to fight, they aren’t going to walk out of this. He eases Tony down, props his body against the wall, and Tony lets out a horrible moan that Steve desperately wishes he could unhear _._ He strips off his parka, rolls Tony into it as best as he can. Tony sags, he’s too high to notice, and his arms are all torn up, shallow cuts carved into the soft hollows of his elbows, and Steve tries to swallow down the idea that he’s dressing a corpse –

(Not a corpse, Tony. Alive _._ Tony is _alive –_ )

He digs in his pack, wills his body to work faster, imagines them swarming down the stairwell, imagines tremors under his feet as their boots sound on the stairs. He snatches out the flashbangs, clips them to his belt along with the rest of the pulse grenades, and sticks two bricks of C4 to the underside of his shield, fits the detonators in and clips the remote to his belt. He shrugs his pack back on, begs silent forgiveness, and hoists Tony over his shoulders in a fireman carry. Tony whines out a terrible hoarse scream like his lungs won’t give him the air to do it, and Steve _can’t_ , it rips at his chest and there’s not a fucking thing he can do about it –  

Steve kicks the door to the stairwell open.

He wasn’t imagining, there are Skrulls, floors above him, and he hears their boots on the stairs, sees their plasma rifles sticking out over the railing, and he presses his body (Tony’s body) against the wall, takes the stairs two by two –

A cascade of plasma fire tears down through the stairwell, melts the railing where his hand had been two seconds earlier. There’s a bang, and two more Skrulls burst through the door the next landing up. Steve’s body is moving automatically again, he’s already tucking the C4 into his belt, shield in hand, and Tony’s leg bumps against his back as he sprints up. He raises his shield just in time to deflect their next volley of weapons fire, and then sends it soaring up the stairs to slice cleanly through the first one’s spinal column. It lodges in the wall, and Steve is taking the last two steps in a desperate leap, wrenching the other Skrull’s plasma rifle up when it fires a wild shot and pain shoots up his arm in a blinding melt–

He swears violently, he can feel his arm burning, the smell of ozone thick in his nostrils and the taut pull of the plasma clinging to his cauterized skin, but he doesn’t have time. He takes the other Skrull down with a hit that knocks its head to the side with a snap, wrenches his shield out of the wall, and he runs runs runs up to the next landing –

He sets another breaching charge, darts up the stairs a few feet, and blows the door.

There’s a burst of purple spilling through the hole as soon as he’s done it, and Steve presses himself to the wall and fumbles at his belt and swears. He should have rigged up a pistol belt sling – Tony is thinner, but he’s tall, he’s heavy, and Steve has to hold onto his leg or he’ll slide off of his shoulders (he’s got no strength of his own). As it is, he’s got only one usable arm, but it’ll have to do. He bites at one of the flashbangs, tosses it in through the hole as hard as he possibly can, and there’s a bang and agonized shouting in Skrull, and Steve is entirely too eager to deal them as much pain as he possibly can.

He leaps in through the gap, shield raised, and they’re staggering, clutching at their enormous pointed ears. The firing stops for a split second, and Steve gets a look around – Tony’s suits are nowhere to be seen, the garage has been gutted, the Quinjet’s gone, replaced by rows and rows of something that look vaguely like speeders.

Then, of course, they’re getting up, because their biology apparently isn’t enough to keep them down long enough for Steve to do what he has to do, because everything is twice as hard as it has to be, isn’t it. The Skrulls are back on their feet, and there’s violet plasma haze heavy in the air, and Steve ducks behind a huge craft he can’t identify and swears and pointedly doesn’t look at his arm. He can hear them, bearing down the stairs, too, coming to get them, coming to shoot them, coming to gas them –

He’s choking on smoke again, then, because they’re firing in full force, fully recovered, and he roars as one of the energy bolts glances off one of the speeders and clips him in the stomach. Steve grits out an aborted scream, and then the door gets blown off its frame entirely. There’s at least a dozen of them, swarming in formation through the gaping hole in the wall from the stairs, and even more of them coming up from the elevator to the control room below them. And god, what was he thinking, he’d give anything to have Carol here, Sam, anyone, anyone who _cares_ –

(But they didn’t care, they abandoned him to this –)

They need to leave. Now.

He swears, because he doesn’t want to do it this way, but he grits his teeth and reaches for a pulse grenade, lobs it over the row of what look like some kind of motorcycle-aircraft hybrid. The room lights up with an electric blue flash, and Steve grabs his head and tries to brace himself, but then it’s ripping through him, dancing in his muscles, and he feels like his body is collapsing in on itself. Tony yelps, screams out a terrible howl that lances through Steve’s head like a shot. He blinks like an idiot, pushes through his own nausea, staggers, it’s awful, he was too close, his aim was off and it landed meters closer than it should have. His ears are ringing, he feels like he’s going to vomit, he can’t see, and Tony is so limp, his body slung over Steve’s like he’s dead –

They’re down, all of them save for a few trying their best to get up, and Steve eases Tony down into his arms again, stumbles around the enormous flier he’s hidden behind, scoops up a plasma rifle as he goes. He picks one of the speeders (please let them be manageable, _please_ ), swings a leg up over it, and his head, his head is _pounding_ , his ears are going to be ruined for an hour –

Tony screams, twists in his arms, and Steve didn’t hear the shot, but he looks down and ducks, and Tony’s leg is smoking, an angry crimson weal laid across the bruises -

There’s a searing pain in his hip, and Steve is shot too, his shirt’s torn and there’s more purple fire lancing over his head. He gasps, tries to breathe through the pain (what else can he do, there’s _no one else_ ), swings Tony’s leg up and over, sits Tony in front of him, half on his lap, his bare legs exposed to the cold, jabs buttons frantically, _please, please please –_

The bike rockets forward, and it’s all Steve can do to clutch at his shield and wrap an arm around Tony’s chest and then they’re plowing over Skrulls and careening up the ramp to the street, and Steve hopes against hope this is going to work.

 

\- - -

 

_Tony is wearing a long-sleeved shirt. He’s standing over the new engine component for the Quinjet redesign he asked for, pretending to be working on the twin-link couplings._

_Steve knows he’s pretending because there’s nothing wrong with the couplings, they just flew the Quinjet back after the debacle in Central Park today._

_“I’m not in the mood,” Tony says quietly._

_“Well, get in the mood,” Steve says with a sigh, “Because I’m not going away. I know you don’t want to hear –“_

_“No,” Tony says without looking up, “I really don’t.”_

_“Well,” Steve says, crossing his arms, “That’s too bad, because I’m going to tell you anyway. I’m concerned – ”_

_“Ok,” Tony says. “You can stop there.” He stands, from where he’s been sitting, and he moves like his limbs are leaden, shifts his weight a bit too awkwardly, takes the few steps over to his workbench a hair too stiffly._

_It’s alarming how quickly this has escalated._

_“Do you think I’m stupid?” Steve says. “I’m worried about you, you were with him again last night, weren’t you– “_

_Tony stares at him for a minute, like he’s trying to decide whether or not to bolt. “It’s none of your business,” he says finally, and turns away to grab a rag from where it’s draped over his chair._

_“Your performance is off,” Steve says flatly. If this is the way this has to go, this is the way he’ll do it._

_“My performance is fine,” Tony says immediately._

_“Your reaction time was shitty today,” Steve says bluntly. He pushes off from the counter where he’s been leaning, and does what he’s been wanting to do, steps into Tony’s space, makes himself impossible to ignore. “It’s almost like you were injured, the way you were flying. Now, why could that be –“_

_“Fuck off, Steve,” Tony says, and he sounds more tired than angry._

_“Tony, you need to –”_

_“It’s none of your business,” Tony says, and his voice is cold now, he’s given up any pretense of pretending to work._

_“It’s none of my business?” Steve echoes. He pulls the collar of Tony’s shirt down with two fingers, and he knows it’s stepping out of bounds, but this is fucking ridiculous, and there are bruises all over his collarbone –_

_“I like it rough,” Tony snarls unexpectedly, shrugging him off. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand.” He smoothes his hand over his neck and takes a step back, and he’s never like this, he’s never mad like this –_

_“I’m trying to help you,” Steve bites out, mad and hurt and terribly confused, “I don’t get it, Tony, Tiberius is an asshole –”_

_“You’re dating a felon,” Tony says._

_“She’s not a felon,” Steve says, “stop evading –“_

_“WHATEVER,” Tony yells. “I don’t tell you how to fuck your significant other, stop telling me how to do it, ok, I’m fine, it has nothing to do with you–”_

_Steve grabs Tony’s wrist and he hisses in pain. Steve looks up at him for a split second in alarm, and then he pulls Tony’s sleeve up, and his wrist is all swollen, there’s a horrible purple-pink bruise spreading out from his wrist and up his thumb, and more all up his forearm, and Tony is pulling away like he’s been burned –_

_“Jesus, Tony,” Steve says. “Your wrist is broken.”_

_“It’s not broken,” Tony says, “It’s just a bad sprain.”_

_“And you’re a doctor now –“_

_“I got Don to look at it, ok,” Tony snaps. “Back the hell off.”_

_Steve stands there in his costume, feeling like an absolute failure as team leader, because he didn’t know it was this bad, and he should have been paying more attention, because Tony is getting his bones broken, isn’t he –_

_“You’re on a team, you know,” Steve says quietly. “You have people that care about you.”_

_“Yeah,” Tony says shortly._

_“I need you to be ok,” Steve says. “I need you on this team.”_

_“I’m fine,” Tony says._

_“No you aren’t,” Steve says. “You’re being a jackass.”_

_Tony stares at him for a minute, inscrutable, hard lines and stubborn, stubborn determination to stay silent, and then he slumps a little, deflates, resolutely turns back to the engine he’s not working on and presses his lips into a thin line._

_“Thanks, Cap,” he says, and it’s not even flippant, it’s just sad and strained. Tony reaches out to punch in a combination on the keyboard, and the door to the elevator to mansion—level springs open. “Get out, please,” Tony says without looking at him._

_Steve thinks he should say something, but he doesn't, he just goes, dragging his feet, feeling entirely awful, wishing Tony would care as much as he does._

\- - -

 

Broadway is not the Broadway he knew.

The street isn’t like the sleek lines of their sky level, it’s all rubble and dust and snow melting into slush here. There are people, real people. Skrulls too, but _humans_ , walking, skulking on the sidewalks, slinking around next to the buildings, toeing around piles of broken glass and rebar, clutching their coats around them. The ones who didn’t make it out of the city, he thinks.

The speeder is entirely out of his control, and Steve clings to Tony and clings to the handlebars and weaves through dividers and around piles of rubble and swings his weight around as best he can. It seems to be the only way to turn the thing, he doesn’t understand how the acceleration works or how to brake and the handlebars don’t seem to respond to his touch. People are stopping, to stare at them, and then Steve realizes they aren’t looking at _them_ , they’re looking _behind them_ –

He hears it, a rumbling, like what he heard when he woke up, a crunching grate of metal and machinery, and he’s considering whether or not he can safely look behind him when a fucking tank rolls out from behind a gutted Barnes and Noble.

Steve almost rolls them over trying not to plow into the side of it in a fireball, and he plows over a tangle of rebar and concrete slabs and barely skates by between it and the building to the side.

Then the shooting starts, because it’s always worse, isn’t it.

He feels a shot lodge in down by his belt through the pack, feels the impact and lurches forward, Tony’s head lolling against his shoulder. There are more of them behind, he can hear them, he can see them in window reflections occasionally, when there are windows to look in (most of the buildings along the street are gutted, it’s more like an idea of a city), and people scamper out of his way and press themselves against the sides of buildings as he rockets by.

He chances the glance behind him, and good _god,_ they must really want him dead, because there’s two tanks and more speeders and possibly a swarm of those fucking drones from the floating stations. They’re going to block off the tunnels, he’s sure, the bridges are out, they’ll try to trap them in the city proper, his only chance is to ditch the bike, probably, carry him out –

That’s not going to go well.

Steve can barely keep them both upright. He feels blood seeping through his shirt, the shot went deeper than he thought. It’s cauterized, but he’s been moving, he’s been running, and it’s opened again and he’s not healing nearly fast enough because he hasn’t eaten in 6 hours, and he’s going to have to carry Tony at least to the river, maybe he can find a boat –

He does his best to hold on to Tony and the bike and his shield and the streets fly by. He weaves, because they have good targeting systems (too good), and he’s barely missing the smaller blasts for the speeders, and he leans them both forward as much as he dares, because it’s the only thing he’s done that seems to make them go faster. He’s trying to steer the thing and dodge and figure out where he is, and then he sees the sign that says he’s almost to Hudson Heights, and he realizes he’s going about 90 miles an hour.

This is going to be awful.

He waits a few more blocks, and then he grits his teeth and throws his weight to the left, hard, right in front of another pile of concrete and a few gutted cars. It’s one of the narrower side streets, almost an alley, and a few of them are dumb enough to try the same thing and end up as purple fireballs instead. The smoke mushrooms up behind him, deep violet flames, and Steve doesn’t know how he’s going to shake the rest of them. The tanks are still following him, and he can hear the drones charging up for another burst of fire. He floors it, he prays, and he barely gets a hand to his belt to lob a pulse grenade over his back –

He feels the initial wave happen, hears the tank immediately behind him sizzle and come to a grinding halt, hears the ones behind that one crash into it, hears the drones smash into buildings in a electric cloud, and then he realizes he wasn’t far enough out from the blast radius.

Shit.

It doesn’t really catch him, it doesn’t seem to fully disrupt his bike like it stopped the tanks dead, and he keeps moving, just without any remaining measure of control. The plasma fire is tapering off, but Steve doesn’t dare chance a look over his shoulder to see how much space he’s bought them. He’s jetting down 187th now, he’s got too much speed to just fall out of the air. They’re rocketing towards a T-intersection, and Steve tries to turn them right, to send them North again, eases back his speed and _leans_ with all of his and Tony’s weight, but he just can’t bank this fucking machine. Momentum insists that they settle for a narrow alleyway across the street instead, and Steve desperately hopes they’ll fit.  

The bike skids and scrapes against the brick wall, takes some of the skin off Steve’s shoulder, and they bounce along the pavement. He clings to Tony with all his might, holds the shield out in front of them both, because this is going to be bad, and messy, and they’re both going to be concussed –

The speeder crashes into a dented dumpster piled full of trash bags and boxes that haven’t been taken away in what looks like weeks. He’s thrown into the wall, smashes his skull into the brick. He sits, dazed, barely propping himself up, Tony slumping in his lap. He’s definitely got a concussion, his ears are ringing, and it’s really not the time, but none of this is the time. He’s forcing himself to his feet, hoisting Tony and bending to pick up his shield when one of the boxes moves.

He raises his shield without a thought, because he’s one thousand percent done, and unbelievably wired, but then something small and almost black with filth crawls out a nasty cardboard box that looks like it’s soaked through with rain, and it’s got paws, and glistening black eyes, and –

It’s a puppy, underneath all the dirt.

A puppy.

It’s a retriever, he thinks, or a lab, and its fur is slicked over with grime and grease and it’s shivering on its enormous puppy paws, and it looks at Steve and meets his eyes for a split second.

Really, that’s all it takes.

Steve stares back at it, and it’s _limping_ , and it’s bleating out these desperate little whining yelps and it’s so goddamn pathetic it hurts –

Christ.  

“Dammit,” Steve says, and scoops it up by the scruff of its neck and shoves it into what’s left of his shirt. He tells himself it’ll keep Tony warm. He’s a bastard if he leaves it.  

The puppy stops crying. There’s that, at least.

Steve picks his head up, then, because he hears the whine of a siren cut through the air, multiple sirens ( _police_ sirens?), and they’re already entirely too close. The ground is rumbling, and he sees it, an APC rocketing by up the avenue, headed north. Steve presses them against the wall thinking they’re done for, desperately looking for a way to scale the fence with Tony on his back –

It rolls on by. They must not have a bead on them yet.

But Steve knows it's not going to be long before they see the smoke rising off of the bike – there’s less of it than he expected, but still bright _green_. Three minutes to find the speeder. Ten to seal off the neighborhood. Thirty and the whole fucking city will probably be locked down. And without transport, getting spotted is as good as a death sentence. He’s the furthest thing from inconspicuous there is like this, carrying a half-naked Tony, a shiny target painted on his back, a sopping puppy poking its head out of his shirt.

For a second, Steve considers telling himself that he's gotten out of worse than this.

 Really, he's never been much good at lying.

He turns west, runs to the end of the alley and makes for the river.

 

\- - -

 

Steve makes it through 13 blocks and an industrial wasteland without incident, and then Tony decides to come out of his drug-induced haze when he’s almost got the boat undone.

He blinks himself awake, bloodshot and confused, and then his gaze settles on Steve’s face and slides into something like abject terror. His eyes are as wide with panic as they can be for how doped he still is, and he thrashes in Steve’s arms and jabs him in the throat with his elbow, and Steve is too slow to react and _drops_ him. Tony crashes to the dock and rolls onto his side, doubled over in pain, and he lets out a horrible strangled yelp.

“Oh, Jesus, Tony,” he says, scrambling down onto one knee after him, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to.”

Tony is trying to crawl away.

He’s half upright, but he’s unsteady, weak enough that his legs won’t hold him, and he falls, hard, scrapes his skin and bashes his chin into the dock. He stays down, then, lies on his belly, the parka hitched absurdly up over one hip, his face mashed into the dock.

“Don’t fuck with me,” he slurs, and it sounds like he’s crying again.

“I’m not fucking with you,” Steve says, and they don’t have time for this, “it’s me, Tony, you gotta be quiet, ok, they’re gonna hear us, please – ”

“ _STOP,_ ” Tony screams, and it’s barely a scream, like his throat’s been grated raw. He paws at the wood with one terribly mangled hand. “Please,” he says quietly, like one who’s learned to plead. “Please, you can do whatever you want, however you want me, ok – I’ll be quiet, I’ll be – good, just shoot me, shoot me when you’re done, _please_. Anything, anything you want,” he gasps.

Steve’s heart stops for a few seconds.

“Tony, _no_ ,” he chokes, “I’m not, I don’t,” and he’s inches away from clamping a hand over Tony’s mouth and dragging him into the shed to wait out the patrols, because he can’t _listen_ to this, “ _please_ , shut the hell up -”

“I’ll cry,” Tony says, with all the breath he has, staring off into nowhere. “I’ll cry if you want, I can scream, I know you like it when I scream, I can.”

Steve just about dies.

“No,” he croaks, “Tony, no, come on, stop –”

“ _What do I have to do_ ,” Tony wails. “ _KILL ME_.” His voice breaks, if he ever even had it to begin with, and he sobs into the rotting wood and lies there and shivers. “You fucking _cunt_ , just kill me.”

The puppy is pawing at Steve’s chest, digging its tiny claws into his pecs, snuffling its cold little nose against his skin, but it’s all background, it’s static, because he doesn’t know how to _do_ this, he doesn’t know how to rectify this kind of trauma and desperation and violence. He knows Tony’s high, knows he’s half-dead from the pain, knows he knows _exactly what he’s asking for –_

Steve reaches out, because he feels like he’s going to die if he doesn’t, because Tony should feel something other than pain, and Tony should be something other than freezing and alone and terrified.  He can’t help himself, and his fingers graze the new bruise that’s already coming up on his hip over the fingerprints. “Tony, it’s me, Steve,” he tries to say, and it comes out as a whisper. “Please, you’re ok, I’m not gonna.” He reaches for Tony’s waist, and under his thighs, to pick him back up, and Tony goes absolutely still and his eyes spill over with tears.  

“Just _stop_ ,” he sobs. “No more fucking _GAMES_.”

“It’s not,” Steve chants, and he’s shaking, “it’s not, it’s not, I swear to god, Tony –”

“I fucking hate you,” Tony spits. “JUST _PUT ME DOWN._ ” His scream echoes over the water, and he’s entirely unmanageable, and Steve wants to sink into the ground and die.

Steve looks at Tony, and Tony looks at Steve’s boots like he doesn’t deserve to look at his face and cries, and cries. And it’s all the same, except it's a thousand times worse now, isn't is, they’ve been here before, and Tony is shaking to pieces under his hands, and his eyes are cold and dead and swollen with tears, and Steve thinks –

 _Just do it, Steve_.

Steve looks at his shield and thinks that he’s not sure he shouldn’t.

A patrol ship ghosts out over the water, some 5 miles downstream.

Tony makes a terrible noise, desperate and alone and Steve has never heard him scream like that before, and he can’t fucking stand it.

 _Do it, Steve_.

Steve throws his shield in the boat.

He blinks tears out of his eyes, and wraps an arm around Tony’s neck in a chokehold, tells himself he _has_ to, just for now, he can’t have him crying like this all the way across the Hudson. He presses Tony’s head forward, and Tony doesn’t struggle, his sobs just subside into wheezing gasps, and then he doesn’t make any more noise. Steve bites into his own lip until he tastes blood, tells himself it’s better this way, and then Tony is slumping in his arms, and Steve lets him go, lets him fall to the ground, and rocks back on his heels, absolutely certain he’s going to hell.

He wonders if it wouldn't be better to drown them both.

He wonders if maybe that’s inexcusably selfish.

He peels Tony off the dock, and his head lolls against Steve’s shoulder. The puppy is whining, trying to lick Tony’s ear, and Steve puts a hand on its snout to shush it and pulls the parka around Tony and sets him in the bottom of the boat. It tries to crawl up his shoulder, and he clutches it to his chest as he climbs into the boat, too, as he fits the oars into their clamps, as he fumbles in his pack for the emergency blanket and does his best to tuck it around Tony as he eyes the gunship that’s coming uncomfortably close.

Then he puts his back into it, shivering in the chill March air, and the boat slices into the freezing water and he feels his stomach wound open up again and prays he can get them across before the Skrulls find them.

The puppy sits in his lap and licks his face, and Steve looks at Tony’s ruined body and looks at the sky and looks at the gutted world around him and thinks that maybe he’s in hell.

 

\- - -

 

Steve doesn’t know where he’s going.

He got them across the Hudson ok, snatched his cargo out of the boat and climbed up the bank beneath the cliffs. He’d dragged their boat up with considerable effort and hidden it in a copse of trees, and they must not have seen it, because they’re still swarming all over the river like they don’t know where to look.

Steve runs until he can’t run anymore, and then he limps, then, panting, trying not to crush the puppy under Tony’s dead weight. He'd followed the Palisades north for a while, until the gunships on the river were too numerous and far too close. There’d been a break in the trees, a slope in the cliff face where he managed to scramble up, and he’s been going upriver ever since. It’s just as close, really, but at least up here he can get an estimate of how many miles he's gone, and keep an eye on the patrols below without exposing himself. He’s been desperate to get away, all feeling and no sense, and he needs to find somewhere to hole up, the sun is going down and the temperature is _plummeting_.

He didn’t think he’d have to worry about hypothermia, but he thought that Tony would be able to pull some of his weight, that he’d be able to walk, at least, on his own. As it is, Tony is shivering uncontrollably. The puppy helps a little, even though it’s cold and wet and Steve thinks maybe it peed all over his stomach when he shoved it into his shirt. And Steve’s always been a furnace, but Tony’s not wearing anything but a parka, and Steve needs to get him inside somewhere _stat,_ needs to patch him up and _fix him_ , because he doesn’t look like Tony, he’s some horrible caricature of a man right now, and he hasn’t moved in a few hours. If it weren’t for his breath ghosting in the air, Steve would think he was dead.

Steve’s starting to shiver too, because he’s sweating hard, he’s hurt and wet and really needs to stop moving. He’s been walking for hours, at least, and he has no idea how far he’s come and it’s starting to get dark, as dark as it gets now. He knows he’s in the park, knows if he keeps going east it should be ok, but he’s not going to have the sun anymore soon, and it’s impossible to see the stars with the sky ruined like this –

And then he stops, because he sees a cloud of bats fluttering up into the sky, swooping and diving not 40 feet away.

He’s so grateful he could weep.

 

\- - -

 

The cave isn’t huge, but it’s big enough to stand in in the middle, and there’s trees enough hiding the front that he’s not terribly concerned with building a fire and attracting undue attention. Because honestly, there’s a real possibility they could both freeze if he doesn’t build one, and Tony’s wounds need dressing, and he needs to boil water for that.

Steve cradles the puppy in one arm and shrugs his shirt off, because it’s wet and torn anyway and it’s just keeping him cold. He doesn’t need it, not really, and the puppy seems happy enough to nest in it while he empties the contents of his pack on the floor over drifted leaves and blown-in sticks and dirt on bare stone.

He yanks the tab on the sleeping pad to inflate it, and he wishes he’d brought two, he wishes he’d brought blankets and more morphine than he did (he’s only got two doses left) and a saline drip for Tony.

Mostly, he wishes he didn’t have to be the one to do this.  

He unrolls the sleeping bag, lays Tony out as gently as he can, nestles him into the down and throws the parka on top of the puppy for now. He wraps him in the emergency blanket, too, works as quickly as he can, acutely aware of how frail Tony is right now. How his body is shivering even though he’s unconscious, how he’s hyper-aware of pain and sensation and so very mangled and cold –

He darts around outside for a few minutes, comes up with some kindling and settles a firebed as far in as he can without suffocating them both. He piles snow into his shield and sets it over the flame, and it’s not long before it’s melting into a puddle. He pulls out his embarrassingly inadequate first aid kit, takes his shield off the fire once it’s boiling, and sets it next to him. He unwraps Tony and goes about removing the blood and dirt and filth from his body.

It’s a horrible task.

He smoothes a rag torn from one of his clean shirts over Tony’s skin, wipes the dirt and tears from Tony’s cheeks. Scrubs at the grime crusted into his stubble, tears swimming in his eyes, and absolutely doesn’t think about what it is he’s doing.

He watches the dirt disappear and the bruises and cuts and burns blossom into macabre designs on his chest, his stomach, his throat. Wrings red out of the rag again and again and again.

He just about sobs when he rolls Tony onto his stomach and he sees the dark smears of dried blood that have run down his thighs, and more of the shit he just scrubbed off of Tony’s chin.

He blinks, and blinks, and blinks back the tears he’s been staving off ever since he stepped into that fucking cell, because K’arr’n did this, _all of this_ , with his face.

With his body.

Steve rips the rag he’s using in half and has to tear off another piece.

He pushes it down, because he has to, works with what he thinks is admirable composure, clinical efficiency, but he can’t not see it. There are bruises, on Tony’s neck, in the shape of fingerprints. There are marks on Tony’s hips, too, fingernail-shaped grooves dug into his skin, where K’arr’n –

 _No,_ Steve thinks, because he has to do this, or Tony is going to get an infection and then he’s going to die and all that work will have been for nothing.

He cradles Tony’s head in his lap and gently, gently washes the matted shaggy mess that is his hair.  He dresses the plasma burn on his leg. He sews up the gashes sliced deep into his shoulder, his chest, his thighs. Tony doesn’t even flinch when the needle dips into his skin.

Steve runs out of thread after about 30 minutes.

He swallows down his anger, smears iodide over entirely too much of Tony’s skin and carefully paints every one of his 147 lacerations with skin glue. He smudges aloe on Tony’s electrical burns, on the whip-weals. He wraps Tony’s mangled fingertips in gauze.

(It feels like betrayal, touching his skin like this.)

Steve dumps the water out at the back of the cave, red with Tony’s blood and filth.

He doses Tony with more morphine and then wraps him in the sleeping bag before crawling the foot over to the wall to shiver by himself. He should wrap them both in it, because it’s snowing again, and body heat is a precious commodity they can’t afford to lose. But Tony already whimpers in pain every time he moves, and the last thing he needs is Steve’s body against his.

He’s had about enough of that, Steve thinks miserably.

Steve props himself against the wall, his shield resting in his lap, the puppy curled up sound asleep next to his hip. He steals the emergency blanket and cocoons himself. He thinks maybe he should stitch up his shoulder, dress his stomach, treat the plasma burns covering most of his arm, fix his own body, but it’s hard to think that anything that’s happened to him matters at all when Tony is lying in a near-coma down several pints of blood.

It seems unbelievably selfish to take care of himself when Tony’s been abandoned to this.

He shouldn’t have touched him at all. He shouldn’t have reached for his face or touched his face or stood over him like that, how many times has that preceded something horrendous –

Tony is never going to trust him again.

He wants to blame them. He wants to go back and tell them he’s done, he's gone, that this is what’s driven him away, that it’s inexcusable and atrocious and they’re all bastards for calling themselves Avengers.

But it’s not true, is it. It’s an excuse. Convenient. Deflection.

Because K’arr’n did this, K’arr’n wore his face and wormed his way into Tony’s life and slept in Tony’s bed and hurt him and hurt him and hurt him–

But it was Steve who laid the groundwork for him. 

He sits there, in the cold, watches the fire die, thinks about how Tony wanted to talk and he was so angry that he didn’t care, thinks about Tony crying when they met at the mansion, thinks about how he wrote it all off as Tony being melodramatic, thinks about how the last thing he said to Tony was horrible and how he never raised the faceplate for that entire conversation –

Thinks maybe he should have realized there was something else eating Tony up from the inside.

Thinks maybe he should have realized that it was him.

This is his work.

He wishes he’d brought his fucking shield down when he had the chance to spare them both from all of this.

He wishes K’arr’n had killed him.

Steve realizes he’s sobbing, then, and he doesn’t know how to stop.

 

\- - -

\- - -

\- - -

 

Tony wakes, and for the first time in a long time, the pain is dull.

He’s floating. There’s something cool and soft pressed under his back, and there’s _air_ , real air, not the recycled shit, real air, and _pines,_ and something else, salty and chemical. He tries opening his eyes experimentally, and it’s ok, he can’t make out very much, he’s someplace dark. There’s a bit of light, dancing, patterned. Erratic, and he wonders briefly if they’re going to incinerate him, if this is it, if this is where they’ve taken him to die –

“Tony,” someone is snuffling, and there are cool hands on his forehead.

No such luck, then.

He tries to shift down into some lower place that will make this more manageable, tries to head off the blind panic that’s sinking in his stomach, but he’s all exhaustion and shame, and everything is blurry and his head aches.

“Please,” he says, and he doesn’t know what he’s asking for. Mercy, maybe. It doesn’t matter. He’s not going to get it.

“Tony, it’s me,” K’arr’n says. “I think you’re sick, you’re burning up, ok, can you, Tony, look at me.” Tony thinks that his voice sounds unsteady, but it’s a trick, it’s always a trick, even when it’s not, it’s a trick. He thinks his eyes are open already, thinks he might be crying already. K’arr’n will enjoy that.

“Just use me,” Tony says, “get it over with.”

“Tony, no, _”_ K’arr’n is gasping, and he’s – _crying_ , he’s sobbing, thick, choking gasps that cut through the silence, and Tony doesn’t know what game this is, it’s always him that does the sobbing. “I’m not gonna touch you, ok, _please_ , it’s me, you know me _.”_

“Kill me when you’re done,” Tony mumbles. It won’t be so bad, he’s drugged again, he probably won’t even feel it. It’s – he’s going to be dead soon. It’s fine.

K’arr’n rocks, next to him, Tony can feel the warmth of his body and the cuts on his face stinging from K’arr’n’s tears dripping onto his face. “I’m Steve, it’s me, it’s Steve,” he says.

K’arr’n’s never done this before, he thinks.

He feels himself drifting away again, and he’s unbearably grateful he won’t have to hear any of it, K’arr’n will use him and Tony won’t even know until he wakes up aching all over with his mess dripping down his legs. It’ll be fine.

If he's lucky, he won't wake up at all. 

“Please believe me. Please. _Please._ I’m sorry, I’m sorry for everything, Tony, please –”

“Fuck you,” Tony breathes, and he’s toppling over the edge into darkness.

“It’s me,” K’arr’n sobs. “It’s _me._ ”

Tony passes out. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, it took a while. Russia happened. What do you want. 
> 
> (FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE)
> 
> But actually.


	21. Nadir

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings are in the tags. 
> 
> Now with a gorgeous (spoilery for this chapter) fancomic, because [nohaijachi](http://nohaijiachi.tumblr.com/) decided to make [THIS](http://nohaijiachi.tumblr.com/post/45604709756/so-this-is-a-fancomic-for-sins-of).

Steve stops being able to cry. His body stops. His brain stops.

His heart aches.

It is what it is, he decides. There’s nothing he can do. Tony will – or he won’t, it’s – nothing he can change.

It’s not ever going to be like it was.

He tries to keep his eyes open, he tries to watch, tries not to think, tries to be the guardian Tony deserves to have and doesn’t want. He thinks maybe he’s slipping, that maybe he should patrol, but there’s nothing he can hear outside, just the quiet fall of snow and Tony’s harsh breathing and the puppy’s occasional yawn as it nestles itself deeper into Steve’s parka. Steve doesn’t need it. He’s used to the cold by now.

He watches Tony sleep. He looks at the ugly cuts etched in under his eyes and the purple bruise spreading out from his right cheekbone and the brown smears of older ones on his jawline. He looks at the corners of his mouth rubbed raw and the grey hairs coming up on his temples that were never there before.

Tony would hate that, if he were still Tony and not this wretch of a man.

Steve thinks about how he’s never going to have grey hair. How he’s never going to grow old with anyone. He thinks about Sharon, dead in the ground. He thinks about watching Bucky die the first time. He thinks about Nick and Jan and how there was never any time to say goodbye. He thinks about watching everyone he loves leave him behind. 

He wonders if Tony is going to live through this. He wonders if Tony is ever going to speak to him again. He wonders if he wants him to.

He’s already old. It’s just that no one can ever tell. 

Steve tries. He tries to be a sentry, but if he’s honest, he can’t bear to be awake any longer, he’s barely got the energy to hold himself upright. So he lets himself nod, lets his eyes fall shut, lets his helpless charges slip from his mind, and sinks, his head throbbing with regret and hurt and guilt.

If someone shoots them both while they sleep, well.

Steve’s not going to struggle.

 

\- - -

 

_Tony is kissing his neck._

_He must want something. A favor. Tony will do a lot for a favor._

_Steve pulls him in closer, and Tony shudders under his hands. He tries harder, mouths along Steve’s jaw, scrapes his teeth along his collarbone. “Steve,” he mumbles into Steve’s shoulder, and then he’s pressing the dagger into Steve’s hands. “Do this for me,” Tony says, nipping at his ear. “I want it to be you.”_

_Steve knows._

_“I want you to beg first,” he says. He runs his hands over the broad expanse of Tony’s bare skin, scrapes his nails over his shoulder blades._

_“I can,” Tony says. Steve expected him to argue, but he doesn’t, he just softens and sighs, pliant and sedate and so responsive under his hands. “Please. Do it. I want you to.”_

_“That’s not good enough,” Steve murmurs into his hair. “Do better.”_

_Tony sinks to his knees, lowers his eyes, slides out of Steve’s arms and into something like supplication at his feet. He spreads his legs wide, bites his lip, bows his head, docile like he never is, and grateful, so grateful, he needs Steve, and Steve is happy to do it –_

_Steve smiles._

_“I’m yours,” Tony says. He’s mumbling, though, and Steve wants to see, so he tilts Tony’s chin and forces him to meet his gaze. Steve wants to see him, wide-eyed and desperate and terrified. He wants to see him fall apart, and the feeling runs through him like lightning in his veins – vindication. Tony is just_ there _, all his, Steve’s for the taking, for the hurting, for the saving –_

_“I know you are,” Steve says. “Beg,” he whispers, and it comes out as a hiss._

_“Please,” Tony says, and it’s a plea this time, and Steve tangles his fingers in Tony’s hair, drags his head back, and his neck is all shadows and lines and curves, sloping muscle and pulsing blood. Tony closes his eyes, opens his mouth in a gasp, and that’s what sends Steve over the edge, really. He feels the weight of the dagger cool in his hand, tightens his green fingers on the hilt, presses the blade gently, so very gently to his throat –_

_“Steve, wait,” Tony says, “I have to tell you –”_

_Steve doesn’t wait. Because it doesn’t matter, this is more important, this is what Tony wants (what he wants) and he cants his wrist, drags the blade across his perfect skin, and Tony’s blood bubbles up on the silver._

_“It’s ok,” Steve says. “I know.”_

_Tony’s breathing turns wet, and he clutches at Steve’s biceps as he sinks. Steve kneels to catch him, and watches, entirely enraptured, as Tony gasps and splutters, as his heart pumps blood out of his body, as it drips red through Steve’s fingers._

_Steve thinks that maybe this is all he’s ever needed._

_It’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, watching the life leave Tony’s eyes._

\- - -

 

Steve claws his way out of sleep, half-hard and utterly terrified.

He tries to be rational and tries not to feel, but sleep is far too slow to leave him, he might as well be waking to another nightmare, in this damp cave that smells of ash and blood and the harsh bite of iodine. He lies there, his face mashed into the ground, his eyes frozen open. He thinks _no_ and  _oh god_   _what have I done_ and he looks at his hands to make sure they aren’t green.

He’s fallen over. He’s lying next to Tony.

He feels like he’s going to vomit.

He squeezes his eyes shut, he doesn’t look at Tony’s face, he doesn’t imagine Tony on his knees and begging and naked, (why, _why_  would he dream that) and he drags his body away from Tony’s.

That’s what they’re doing now.

Tony is completely still. His face and his neck are exposed to the bite of the cold, but he hasn’t moved an inch from where Steve arranged him, and it takes everything Steve has not to touch him to make sure he hasn’t died sometime during the night. He’s  _right_ there.

But he doesn’t. That would be indulgent. He’s not permitted. He can’t. It’s his body that’s done this. Tony’s breath is fogging in the air. It’s fine.

If Steve is honest, he hopes it’s hours yet before he wakes. This way, he’s quiet, and Steve doesn’t have to listen to the awful shit that comes out of his mouth when he’s awake, the please’s and use-me’s and shoot-me’s, the things he’s never going to be able to unhear.

Steve levers his body upright. Consciousness is the last thing he wants right now, really, but he putters around, shakes off his miserable excuse for sleep. He makes himself put more pine branches on the fire, makes himself jab at it with the poker until it erupts into something moderately strong again, and then he peels himself out of the blanket and wraps it around Tony as well as he dares.

He can’t have slept for more than a few awful hours, it’s not light yet. This is – good, better, at least, his concussion is resolving itself, he’ll be agonizingly clear-headed now. Alert enough to feel every second of his wounds healing, alert enough to feel every one of his nerve endings regenerating and screaming with pain. He’s already feeling it around his wrist, where it was just a glancing blow. His muscle is knitting itself back together, his skin is creeping back, pink around the edges. He can feel it prickling, knows it’s going to be excruciating in about an hour.

Steve realizes he’s starving. He thinks so, and then he feels guilty, because Tony probably hasn’t been fed real food in months, but Steve doesn’t have the heart to wake him, and 20 percent of his body is covered in rapidly healing plasma burns, and if he wants to have any hope of getting them both back to the farmhouse, he’s going to have to carry Tony and he’s going to have to eat. He rummages in the pack, finds the 2 MREs, scarfs them both (he gives the biscuits to the puppy). There’s a few protein bars left, but he should save those, and he eyes the AR-7 lying disassembled at the bottom of the pack and thinks that maybe he’s going to have to go hunt if they have to camp somewhere else tonight.

He sits back on his heels, weary already, and the dog comes nuzzling up to his leg, wagging its filthy tail.

“What,” Steve says.

It bites at his ankles, smears grease up the sides of his pants, and Steve sighs and hoists it into his lap. It stands up on its hind legs to look at his face, presses a warm, damp little paw into his chest. Opens its mouth in a grin and pants and cocks its head to the side.

“I fed you,” Steve says.

It should look like a dog instead of a greaseball, he thinks. He can put it in Tony’s sleeping bag while he goes to get more wood. It looks so happy, even covered and slick with filth and obviously underfed like it is. It wags its tail.

Steve thinks maybe he should be grateful. He has company when, by rights, he shouldn't have anything. 

He wonders what he was thinking, and then he sticks the puppy under his arm and sighs and digs in the pack for the last of the soap.

 

\- - -

\- - -

\- - -

 

Tony is waking up, and he wishes he weren't.

He hurts. That's normal, though. There's nothing to be done about it. 

He hurts, and he doesn’t remember what it’s like not to. It’s under his skin and crawling like slow fire in his veins and dug into his marrow. It’s stinging where K’arr’n has slipped his blades in and burning where he’s landed the bullwhip and the phantom jolt where he’s driven an electrical current through his flesh. It’s a searing network of nerve endings he wishes he could still turn off.

He’s a canvas now, not a man. K’arr’n’s blank slate.

He’s aching and dizzy, his head is full and heavy and his forehead prickles in the open air. He’s cocooned, somehow, for some reason, sweating bullets, warm. K’arr’n is maybe going to take him in a bed today. He wonders if crawling away is advisable (it’s not, it’s not) but it doesn’t matter because he doesn’t think he could crawl if he tried, so he lies there like a stone instead.

K’arr’n will kick him if it’s not what he’s supposed to be doing.

“Stay,” K’arr’n’s voice says.

There it is.

Tony wonders what it will be today. Because it’s always something, it’s never nothing, K’arr’n’s voice always precedes pain and humiliation. It’s his cue. Now is the time to bury himself. But Tony’s not in control, he can’t manage it, he’s nowhere and his mind is nothing, he’s feeling and darkness and pain that never subsides. A body, nothing more.

Tony thinks that maybe bodies should die more easily than this.

He tries to remember. He thinks he’s been crying, because his eyes feel sticky and puffed, he thinks K’arr’n might have taken him outside, he thinks maybe he remembers begging, but there were drugs, it’s a hazy nightmare (everything is a nightmare) and Tony doesn’t need to remember. It’s irrelevant. It was awful, whatever it was.

“No, stop – fidgeting, come on.”

Tony cracks his eyes open and pain slices through his head. There’s barely light, it’s – a fire, there’s a fire, but everything else is dark, and black, and this isn’t the tower at all –

“Stop.” K’arr’n sounds as miserable as Tony feels.

That’s not right.

K’arr’n is sitting, cross-legged, bare-backed, in front of the fire. His shield (Steve’s, Steve’s shield and Tony gave it to him) is set in front of him, upturned, and he’s doing something, moving his hands around. Tony can’t see his face, but he’s wearing his human skin, Steve's face, and Tony’s stomach twists, because that means K’arr’n is going to play with him. That's what he's for. It's just what happens. It's better, he tries to remember, it's better than getting beaten. 

But K’arr’n isn’t talking to Tony.

He’s talking to the puppy that’s splashing around in his shield, the puppy he’s running his filthy Skrull hands over, the puppy that he doesn’t need to hurt, because Tony is already going to do whatever he says, Tony was always going to do whatever he says.

Tony thinks –

Tony thinks _leave the damn dog alone_ and _what game is this_ and _I’m willing._

“I wouldn’t like it either,” K’arr’n murmurs, and his voice is hoarse and tired and rough. “I’m almost done, ok, I have to, you smelled like shit.”

Tony thinks maybe he’s hallucinating.

“I guess you need a name,” K’arr’n says, and he reaches an arm up and around, because the puppy is wagging its tail and trying to climb out of the shield, and there’s an enormous plasma burn all over his bicep and down his left forearm, what has he been doing, he always lets his grunts get shot for him and it looks like dead muscle and charred flesh and skin knitting back together –

(Real, a real burn, not for show -)

Tony thinks –

“I’m not good at names,” K’arr’n says. “I’ll think of something, ok?” Tony watches him reach out a hand, watches his muscles flex and fail to do what K’arr’n wants them to, watches him wince. He hisses in pain, comes back with a ratty white t-shirt that’s been torn all to fuck. He scoops the puppy up into his arms and scoots closer to the fire and shifts into the light and then Tony sees his back.

There are scars on his skin. They shine, in the dim light of the fire, and Tony knows every one, where they come from, knows how they look in bedroom lighting. But they’re wrong, there are dots, there are tiny circles of pink through his lung and his stomach where Sharon –

Where the bullets –

They’re _pink_. They’re pink, they’re not like the one’s he’s been reproducing for months.

These look fresh. Barely healed.

The puppy growls and yelps out what it probably means to be a ferocious bark, and K’arr’n stops, bends over, puts a hand on its snout, leans in to murmur in its ear. “Sh-sh-shh,” he says. “You’re gonna wake him up.” The puppy responds by gnawing on his hand, and he sighs and presses his lips together and looks at the ceiling, and why is there stubble on his jaw –

Oh no.

He stands, and Tony closes his eyes, Tony plays dead, but he doesn’t think it matters, because he would’ve been on him by now if he wanted to, he would have fucking flayed the thing in front of him by now, he would have –

He hasn’t.

Tony opens his eyes, and he’s kneeling there, next to him, the puppy in his arms.

It’s Steve’s face, and he’s filthy and he’s dirty and there are deep dark shadows worn in under his eyes. He looks utterly weary, and old, older than Steve has ever looked, harrowed, and Tony doesn’t know what to do, because he looks like he’s been crying.

(It wasn't a dream, it wasn't -)

There's nothing in his eyes except terrible, terrible sadness.  

_It’s me, please believe me –_

(Tony doesn’t dare believe.)

“Here,” the man that isn’t K’arr’n chokes out, and dumps the puppy on his stomach. It crawls on him, sprawls out like a blanket, yawns a tremendous yawn and falls right back asleep. “She’ll keep you warm,” he says quietly. He crosses back to the fire, dumps the water out of the shield. Shrugs on a parka that’s leaking feathers everywhere. Hoists an AR-7 over his shoulder. “I’m going to get us more wood,” he says, and he doesn’t look at Tony. “I know you don’t –” he starts, his voice is tight and he has to suck in a shaky breath before he continues. “It’s ok,” he says. “I don’t – I don’t expect anything, ok.”

Tony thinks he sounds disappointed.

He finishes lacing his boots, slings the shield over his back. “I’ll leave this here,” he mumbles, and he puts a pistol on the ground next to Tony’s body before stepping an entire meter away. “In case anyone shows up.” He stands back, lowers his eyes, scrubs a torn-up hand through his filthy blond hair. “I won’t be gone long,” he says. He turns away, slowly, deliberately, and Tony thinks that maybe his breath hitches a little, but then he’s walking away, he’s ducking out and he’s not coming back.

Tony is alone.  

Tony tries to remember the last time he’s been alone, and can’t. He lies there, stares at the place where he was standing, tries to push away the feeling that’s crawling around inside him, because this is a thing that can’t be true, this is –

This is impossible. He saw the body. He saw the body, and he wept, and he mourned, and he - 

The dog licks his face, and Tony stares at it, and Tony thinks about what K’arr’n would do to a puppy if the things he’s done to Tony are any indication at all.

This is impossible, and absurd, except it isn’t, maybe, except no one’s tried to hurt him or force him or drag him out to shiver in a snow bank for 2 hours and there’s no reason for K’arr’n to manufacture facial hair or new wounds or change the color of his fake scars or –

_It’s Steve. I swear, Tony –_

There’s no reason for K’arr’n to have sobbed over him while he slept.

(This is worse, this is worse and not better, this is –)

There’s no reason for K’arr’n not to have touched him.

Tony sends the puppy tumbling, he tears at the sleeping bag, he grits his teeth and cries and swears because he can’t fucking grip the zipper because his fingertips hurt so much. He gets it, finally, and his arms ache and the puppy keeps sniffing his fucking face and Tony looks down and –

And there are bandages all over his body. He’s still naked, but he’s not chained up like a slave, and he’s clean, and he’s warm, and there’s iodine smeared yellow all over his skin and someone’s stitched him up–

Someone.

_Please, Tony. Please believe me._

No one has violated him today.

Jesus Fucking Christ.

Tony sits up, and there’s nothing in his head but panic, and his whole body is screaming to do it. He feels the warm rush of blood seeping into the gauze on his stomach, but it’s nothing, it’s a splinter when his whole body is a gaping wound, because Steve was dead, Steve was dead and that was Steve and Tony is just a miserable fool and a disgrace and a _waste_ and –

No, no, no –

No.

Tony –

Steve knows what he’s done.

Steve knows everything he’s done. Knows what a traitor he is. 

Tony thinks that maybe he could bear this kind of shame if it were anyone else. But it’s not, is it, it’s his  _hero_. It’s what he _wanted_ , it’s Steve he’s been imagining these long months, every kiss and every fuck and every mouthful of come was supposed to be with Steve, it was supposed to be Steve bursting in through that fucking cell door.

But he knows, doesn't he, and Tony is going to have to look him in the eye, and he won’t be able to do it, and Steve is going to be disgusted, he’s going to hate him, he’s going to _hate_ him (still) and everything he’s done and everything he is and Tony _can’t,_ he can't do it, he - 

Tony looks at his hands and looks at the gun on the ground next to him and thinks that maybe Steve left it there for a reason.

Tony isn’t going to argue with reason.

 

\- - -

\- - -

\- - -

 

Steve ducks in, his arms full of wood, his hair dripping wet with melted snow, and he feels the briefest moment of control. A split second of calm.

Then he drops the wood all over the place.

Because Tony isn’t there.

Tony’s sleeping bag is empty except for the dog, who’s nestled down into the foot of it, apparently unconcerned and sound asleep. Steve’s heart is racing already, he’s such an idiot, he never should have left, he should have –

Steve tears out of the cave, ignores the fact that this is dumb, and he has no compass and no shield and none of it fucking matters because Tony is out, in the snow, and what if K’arr’n –

No, Steve decides. No evidence. He’s going to go insane if he thinks that way.

It’s snowing, but it’s not wild gusts of wind, it’s soft, and quiet, and eerily appropriate for this dead world he’s woken up to. He traipses through trees, and Tony’s left footprints, dotted with red specks of blood, unevenly spaced, like he’s stumbled and caught himself. He must be alone then (he has to be), and Steve should be relieved, but he’s cold and terrified and Tony is alone in the night somewhere. Steve follows his trail, and there are places where he’s obviously tanked, Tony-sized marks left in drifts from last night, and Steve makes himself jog, clutching at his stomach, because it’s snowing and it’s dark and he can’t lose him –

Steve rounds a thicket of rhododendrons, and there he is.

Tony is kneeling in a clearing of sorts, his purpling skin stark against the white, some of his bandages already soaked through with blood. He’s still naked, he must not have found the clothes in the pack (how could he possibly, his _fingers)_ , but he’s not holding himself, he’s not bracing against the cold, he doesn’t even seem to notice the cold. Steve thinks maybe he’s in shock. There’s snow on his elbows from where he’s fallen. He’s here because he couldn’t make it any further.

“Tony,” Steve says.

Tony doesn’t move, but Steve can hear him shivering, can see the goosebumps on his arms. He toes around him in a wide arc, and his boots sound in the inch or so that’s fallen, and –

And Tony is holding the Glock in his lap.

“I can’t,” Tony says, like that’s explanation enough, and it almost gets lost the flurry of snow.

“What,” Steve says, “You can’t what.” He sinks, terribly slowly, takes the strap off and sets the rifle in the snow. Because Tony thinks he’s – him, and Tony is going to point the gun at him, and Tony is going to shoot him, maybe.

Tony looks up at Steve, and he can barely hold his head up. It’s not dark at all, really, the moon’s out and the sky is all polluted and Steve can see the blue of his eyes shining with tears. “I can’t do this again,” he rasps, and he doesn’t have his voice back yet. He’s screamed it all away.

“Do what,” Steve says, and he realizes too late that he’s whispering. 

“It’s really you,” Tony says, looking at his lap, turning the gun over in his hands.

Steve thinks maybe his heart would be leaping if he could feel it.

“Yeah,” he says. He inches forward, step by terrible step. “I’m me, Tony, put the gun down.”

Tony doesn’t say anything, there’s just the sound of his labored breathing, the slide of metal on skin, the soft fall of snow and the wind in the dead trees, and then Steve freezes, because he’s racking the slide, with bleeding fingers, and Steve doesn’t even know how he’s managing it, because he doesn’t have any fucking nails on that hand –

“I thought you were him. When you came for me,” Tony says, and Steve is calculating weight ratios and how much force it would take to wrestle the gun away from him –

“No,” Steve whispers, harsher than he means to be. “I’m really me.”

“You were really you last time, too,” Tony says quietly. He keeps his eyes open, and Steve thinks he sees a tear running down his cheek, but his face is miserably resolute.

“Tony,” Steve says, “It’s cold, please, come on,” and Tony screws up his face and closes his eyes and his hand is quaking –

“There’s no reason for you to be here,” Tony says, and it sounds like he’s choking.

“Tony -”

“There’s _nothing_ you could possibly want to say to me,” he says. “You could only be here because you had to be.”

“That’s not – “

“You’re Captain America,” Tony mumbles, like he’s said this thousands of times already. He’s thought this before. He already knows how this is going to end. “It’s what you do.”

“I’m Steve, too,” Steve says, and he realizes he’s holding his breath. “It’s what I wanted to do.”

Tony breathes out a sigh that might actually be a sob, and he shifts, he looks up again, and his face is unmistakably wet this time. 

“No, it wasn’t,” Tony says.

Tony puts the gun to his temple. 

Steve doesn’t think.

He should have expected this, shouldn't he have, he should have -

Steve doesn’t think, and so he lunges forward, and then he realizes he needs to think, that Tony’s fucking life depends on his composure right now, and he just barely stops himself from tackling him to the ground. He’s had training on this sort of thing, but it’s Tony who’s doing it now, not some random person on a bridge, or a tower, and he’s _shaking,_ and he can’t do this, he needs Carol or Maria or someone levelheaded, someone who can talk him down in a level voice and pretend their world isn’t falling apart–

“Tony, _please_ ,” Steve says, and he knows he has to keep his voice level and calm but he _doesn’t know how_. “Just, please, _please_ , don’t, ok, I don’t –”

“This is what you wanted, isn’t it?” Tony says, and his eyes snap open, rimmed with red and terribly, terribly lifeless. “You were gonna do it yourself before they pulled you away.”

“The war is over,” Steve whispers. “Please, Tony.”

“Do you know how I knew?” Tony says.

“How,” Steve croaks, because he’ll do anything to keep him talking, because this cannot be how this ends, not after – not _after_ –

“You didn’t rape me,” Tony says, like that’s a normal thing to say. “You didn’t try.”

Steve feels like he’s been shot.

“No, I would never,” he chokes, ashamed and guilty and heartbroken.

 _How could you think I would_ , he thinks.

Tony shuts his eyes, and his mouth falls open in a terrible jagged grimace. “I’m tired,” he gasps, his body so slight in the snow, his eyes sunk in dark circles. “I didn’t want you to see me like this.”

“Tony,” Steve says. “I’ve already seen you, I don’t care, I just want you to be ok – “

Tony chokes out the barest of laughs.

“I’m not ok,” he says, “I’m really not.”

“I know, just, _please_ , put the gun down, ok, you’re bleeding again –“

“Why are you here,” Tony says.

“Because I had to get you out,” Steve whispers.

“No,” Tony gasps. “Why are you here. Why is it you.”

Steve doesn’t know how to answer that. “Who did you want it to be?” he croaks.

Tony stares at him, and Steve can’t read him, because how do you read a face that’s so tired and sad, that used to be alive. “It had to be you,” Tony says finally, and his voice is so flat and desperate and cold. “It had to be you, because you’re the only one who would do it, weren’t you.”

“No,” Steve says, and the word barely makes it out of his mouth.

Something like a laugh makes its way out of Tony’s mouth, choked and twisted up in tears and shuddering gasps. “You’re a shit liar,” he says. “I should have known because you’re a shit liar and he was, he –” He’s not breathing right, he’s sucking in air and staring at his knees, and his lip is trembling and he squeezes his eyes shut –

“You couldn’t have known,” Steve says, but it’s harsh in his mouth, and he doesn’t believe it, not really. Tony looks, and looks, and then his hand is shaking and Steve realizes, too late, how unnecessarily bitter that sounded.

Tony though, Tony didn’t miss it.   

He bursts into tears and curls over in half, the barrel still pressed to his temple, and his mouth falls open, slick and red and bleeding from where he’s bitten into his lip. “I should have,” he sobs, and then he’s breaking apart, the gun is falling out of his hands. He folds in on himself, clutching his mangled fingers in his hair, and Steve can see every single one of his vertebrae under his skin. “I could have known,” he sobs, “what did I do. What did I _do._ ”

Steve sinks to his knees, slower than he should, snatches the Glock and his rifle up out of the snow.

He wants to say something. He wants to say a thousand things. He wants to apologize. He wants to yell. He wants to say something that isn’t going to make Tony want to eat a bullet.

But nothing that comes out in his voice is ever going to be the right thing to say. Not now.

“Tony,” he tries, “I’m.” His voice is cracking, he doesn’t know how to be anything he has to be right now, because he’s terrified, because Tony doesn’t care and Tony cares too much and it scares him how much that scares him.

“I’m sorry,” Tony gulps. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“You didn’t do anything,” he mumbles, utterly lost. _  
_

“I did,” Tony sobs. “You don’t understand what I’ve done.”

Steve thinks he understands entirely too well.

“Tony,” Steve says desperately, “stop crying, ok, _please_ , it’s 20 degrees, you’re freezing out here.”

Tony gasps into his hands and rocks back and forth and _howls_. “Let me freeze,” he says, “how can you even look at me.”

“No, Tony, come on,” Steve says, because he thinks Tony’s hyperventilating. “Ok, ok, please, it’s ok, just.” He’s not even sure if Tony hears him or not, and it’s never been more not ok –

“Shoot me,” Tony says between sobs, and Steve’s heart clenches in his chest.

“No,” Steve breathes, “I’m not gonna shoot you, I’m not going to hurt you, ok, you’re safe –“

“ _Please,_ ” Tony sobs. “I’m asking you, please.”

“I’m not shooting you,” Steve says, feeling mildly hysterical, “No one is shooting anyone-"

“ _I CAN’T DO IT,”_ Tony wails, and he’s sobbing and spitting and there’s snot all over his chin. “I can’t do it because I’m a _coward_ and I, I let, you have to, _god,_ just –”

“I just got you _back_ ,” Steve says, and he’s yelling, wound too tight and and terrified and hurting, and _Tony_. “I just got you out, you selfish fuck, how can you _ask_ me that, how _can_ you, Jesus –”

Tony is falling over, he’s lying in the snow, he’s sobbing and his skin is all pebbled goosebumps and patches where the hair on his arms won’t stand up because there’s too much scar tissue. “I know,” he’s sobbing, “I know I’m selfish, I know, I –”

“Oh, Jesus, Tony, no, I didn’t – stop, ok,” Steve says, and he’s forgotten that he can’t be cruel, he forgets that he can’t touch Tony, and he goes to pick him up, to wrap him in his jacket. To lend some small comfort.

Tony _wails_ when Steve’s fingers touch his skin.

It's not fair, it's not fair, it's not fair. 

“Tony, just, _please_ ,” he says, and he’s begging now, because there’s nothing else he can do, because he can't hold himself together any longer. “Please, I’m sorry, I have to, you’re so cold. Look, look at your fingers, come on, it’s 2 minutes, ok, that’s all it is, please, let me, ok, I’m sorry.”

“I don’t care,” Tony cries. “I don't fucking care. I’m a waste, I don’t, I –” Tony can’t say anything else, then, because he’s sobbing too hard, and Steve doesn’t understand how they could let this _happen_ –

“Tony, _please_ ,” Steve says miserably, because _he_ cares, he cares and he wishes he didn’t, and Tony is going to freeze and Tony wants to kill himself and Steve isn’t crying, he can’t be crying right now, he’s going to be the strong one. Then it doesn’t matter, because his vision is going blurry, his eyes are welling up and it’s beyond his control and hot and wet all over his cheeks anyway. He bends, and doesn’t want to, he runs his terrible undeserving hands over Tony’s trembling body and scoops him up, absolutely certain he’s going to hell for this.

Tony stops making noise entirely, and it’s because of Steve, it has to be, and he wants to sob and wants to scream and he doesn’t do anything but bite it all back. Steve glances down, and Tony’s still crying, he’s just choking back his sobs now, swallowing them down in silence, staring off into space. He looks like a ghost.

Steve fixes his gaze straight ahead, feels the tears rolling off his face. “I’m sorry,” says. It’s hopelessly inadequate, but there’s nothing better he can think of. “I didn’t mean for this to happen,” he chokes out.

He’s not sure what he meant to happen.

Not this.

He thinks he expected to throw some punches and part ways, bitter and angry and done. He thinks he meant to hurt Tony, because Tony meant to hurt him (didn’t he?) and Tony beat him down and Tony threw him out and Steve wanted to hate.

He thinks that’s probably the wrong way to feel.

He feels his stomach twisting and thinks that maybe they’re both paying.

“Forgive me,” Tony is sobbing.

Steve can’t say anything, so he doesn’t.

 

\- - -

 

Steve ducks into the cave, and he refuses to think about anything but getting Tony warm again.

His lips are blue.  

Tony is silent and cold and pale, so Steve mumbles apologies, puts him down and stuffs him back into the sleeping bag. The fire is almost out, and he grabs some of the wood and shoves it into the smoldering pile of ash, pokes it until it stirs up again. He finds the hopelessly inadequate stuff he’d stuffed in the pack for Tony, a grey Henley and a pair of black pants, and he wishes he’d thought to bring underwear. Tony should feel like a person again.

Tony gasps, and every time, every goddamn noise he makes is like a fucking knife to his heart, and Steve can’t, but he has to, has to work faster, get him dressed, get him warm, get him away –

Then he turns around, and Tony is clawing his way up into a sitting position, looking absolutely terrified.

Tony is looking at the mouth of the cave.

“You’ve caused me a great deal of trouble, Captain,” K’arr’n says.

Steve is overcome by the urge to rip his throat out and paint the walls with his blood. 

He’s standing just inside, the snow still melting on the toes of his boots. He’s wearing black, and he looks like a Skrull today, not Steve, although he’s still got tawny hair that’s sticking up all over the place and Steve’s eyes. There’s a cut over his left brow, a darker green than his skin, already healing.

He’s holding the puppy by the scruff of its neck.

He’s playing with his dagger with the other hand, and the puppy’s tail is between her legs, and she lets out a pitiful whimper and flails her paws. “You humans love to pick up strays,” K’arr’n says, and he cradles the dog in his arms instead. He smiles. “It’s precious.”

Steve doesn’t actually think about what he’s doing until his shield is in his hand and he’s tackling K’arr’n to the ground.

He doesn’t think about the burns on his hip or his stomach, or the rifle that’s falling off his shoulder and clattering to the ground, or the fact that his entire arm is searing with burning pain, or Tony hyperventilating and trying to crawl away in his peripheral vision.

Steve thinks _die_ and _burn in hell_ and _I’m going to fucking kill you_.

K’arr’n drops the puppy, and it yelps and rolls onto its feet and scampers away off into the cave somewhere. They fall together, hard, and Steve is already swinging, Steve’s fist is connecting with muscle and bone and cartilage, and K’arr’n gasps, or maybe laughs, but it doesn’t fucking matter, because this is what Steve _does_ and he’s going to bash his green fucking face in.

K’arr’n knees him in the chest. Steve wheezes, but he’s grinning too, or maybe it’s a snarl, because he’s raising his arm, the straps of his shield slung over his elbow, and he’s bearing down with all of his weight and K’arr’n has really fucked up because Steve is not in the fucking mood–

He hits stone, instead of Skrull spinal column. Steve swears a blue streak, because he’s forgotten, K’arr’n is quick, and K’arr’n has his memories and his skills, and K’arr’n is possibly just as good at this as he is (better, maybe)–

Steve recovers, barely, grabs K’arr’n’s wrists, his shield secure on his arm, and tries with all his might to force K’arr’n’s hands up above his head. He means to send the dagger flying, he means for him to drop it, but it’s not enough, his shoulder aches and his arm is burning and he can’t get his breath because his stomach is bleeding again, and K’arr’n just smiles and pushes back, brings the hand clutching his dagger closer, closer to Steve’s throat, where the zipper to the parka is coming undone –

“I don’t think so,” K’arr’n says, and Steve grits his teeth, and where is his strength now, when he needs it most, why is K’arr’n so much stronger than he is –

K’arr’n rolls them over, and then Steve is being pulled up and slammed into the ground, his head is cracking against stone and the pain is blinding and aching and stabbing all at once, and then K’arr’n is pulling the shield off his arm like it’s _nothing_ –

Steve rolls, blind, kicks, and he thinks he successfully knees K’arr’n in the groin because he gasps and Steve is mercifully free for a moment. He forces himself to his feet, blinks purple spots out of his vision, tries to hear around the ringing in his ears, and there’s blood in his mouth, he’s bitten his tongue –

K’arr’n is already back on his feet though, and then he’s slamming Steve against the wall, swiping his knife in a wide arc and it rips through Steve’s shoulder and he screams. This is bad, he thinks, and he feels faraway and mildly embarrassed and mostly bone-weary and ashamed, because K’arr’n is better than him, and he’s bleeding a lot (too much), and Tony –

There’s no one left to keep him safe.

Steve thinks he’s falling, then, or maybe he’s being dragged down, but K’arr’n is on top of him, K’arr’n is straddling him, wrapping a massive green hand around his throat. “I’m going to kill you this time,” K’arr’n says. “Just so you know.” He reaches behind him for something. “There’s no tool more appropriate for the task, really.”

K’arr’n brings the shield down, then, and Steve feels his collarbone shatter.

Tony is screaming, he’s yelling something and Steve can’t even open his eyes to look, he’s in so much pain. He thinks his throat is bleeding, he thinks he’s choking, maybe, and then K’arr’n brings the shield down again and Steve feels at least four of his ribs fracturing.  

“Tell me, Captain,” K’arr’n says, throwing the shield down with a clatter, ripping his dagger out of its sheath to hold it up beneath Steve’s eye. “Was it worth it?”

Steve opens his mouth to breathe in air, but he tastes blood bubbling up on his tongue instead.

K’arr’n drives his blade into Steve’s stomach.

Then he _twists_ , and Steve is gasping and someone is screaming (it might be him). K’arr’n pulls the dagger out, holds it up between them. Watches Steve’s blood drip off the blade.

“What were you going to do,” K’arr’n says conversationally, “once you’d saved your whore?”

Steve didn’t think he’d die like this.

K’arr’n stabs him again. Steve can’t keep the blood out of his mouth.

“Stay awake, Captain,” K’arr’n says. “I want you to watch this.”

 _Tony,_ he thinks, and then he can’t think any more.  

 

\- - -

\- - -

\- - -

 

Tony is sure now.

Tony watches K’arr’n stabbing the shit out of Steve, flesh and blood and alive, and thinks that his heart wouldn’t be ripping itself apart if he were another imposter.

Steve is dying. Right now. All over again.

Because of Tony.

“I want you to see what he is,” K’arr’n is saying, and Steve is moving his lips, and no sound is coming out, and K’arr’n smiles, and he’s getting up, fucking hell, he’s getting up and he’s wiping Steve’s blood off on his pants –

Steve isn’t moving. There’s blood running out the side of his mouth. His eyes are open, his pupils are all strangled. He’s gasping in pain. There’s blood in his lungs.

Tony knows what dying looks like by now. 

“Did you miss me,” K’arr’n says to Tony, and he’s not bothering to change his face, even, and Tony looks at the rifle lying on the ground and thinks that he could, but it’s a fucking .22, and it would be like a bee-sting to K’arr’n –

K’arr’n sees Tony looking, and he laughs.

Tony crouches, and Tony is panicking, he doesn’t know what to do, he can’t stop looking at Steve and he’s already thinking ahead to the part where he kneels and begs and cries and the puppy is cowering behind him, as if he can do anything, as if he’ll protect it –

K’arr’n snatches the rifle up, in one smooth motion, twists it around in his hands. Grins.

“No,” K’arr’n says. “Nice try.”

K’arr’n bashes his teeth in with it.

Tony falls, and he’s too unsteady to get his hands out in time, and his head cracks against the floor of the cave. He blinks, and blinks, and the puppy whimpers and he can feel it shaking against his bare thigh. His mouth is full of blood. He thinks he feels one of his teeth rolling around under his tongue. The back of his head feels warm.

“See,” K’arr’n says, “You have nowhere to go.”

Tony lies there, feels the world going dim. He thinks he’s not getting enough oxygen. He thinks he might pass out. He thinks he doesn’t want Steve to see this happen.

“You know you're ruined, don't you?" K'arr'n says. "He doesn’t want you. He never did.”

Tony knows. K’arr’n doesn’t need to say so.

K’arr’n kneels over him where he’s fallen. Cups Tony’s face in one of his hands. “Do your best,” he says. “The Captain is watching.”  

Tony closes his eyes and hopes that Steve is dead already.

He waits, half-conscious. He feels K’arr’n touching his cheek, hears the puppy whimpering somewhere off to his right, feels blood sliding down his throat. Feels the tightly-wound panic that he's never really managed to get over. 

Then Tony hears the _snick_ of blades extending.

K’arr’n is screaming. In pain or anger, Tony isn’t sure.

The cave is on fire, he thinks, except he’s not burning. It’s terribly bright, and Tony lies there, thinking that maybe this is a botched assault, maybe Veranke’s had enough of K’arr’n’s bullshit and they’re all going to be torched this time. He can’t see, it’s all light, he can feel the air humming with energy, and K’arr’n is gone, K’arr’n is screaming again–

“Fucking _Christ,_ can you, OW, just fucking _stay down,_ you fucking cunt –”

The light turns purple, and Tony is certain he’s hallucinating.

“Jesus _FUCK_ ,” someone shrieks. “What the hell was that, he just –”

“Carol,” someone says.

Tony’s head feels warm. Soft.

“Carol, I need you, _now_ –”

“Oh my god, Jesus, he’s – is he even alive, oh my god, Logan, he’s –“

“I know, Christ, ok, take him, you’re faster, I’ll get Stark – ”

“Oh my god, _Logan,_ Tony–“

“I _know_ , I see, fucking _fly him out of here_ , Danvers _–_ “

Someone leans over Tony, and someone is fitting him into something soft. Tony can’t see, but he smells like cigars, and it’s Logan, it has to be –

“It’s just me,” Logan says. “Gonna take you back, ok, bub?”

Tony opens his mouth to say something, and only blood comes out.

“Stay with me,” Logan says.

Tony is already gone. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, you probably think I'm having such a great time in Russia that I just forgot to update. 
> 
> WRONG. 
> 
> This has been the week and a half from hell, and a lot of terrible things happened, but the most time-consuming of these was bedbugs, but I'm bug-free now (apparently they can use chemicals here that were banned decades ago in the US) and I'm back on something approaching a normal life routine. 
> 
> I still work on this every day, and I'm usually drinking tea and eating soup and languishing in my soviet dorm. 
> 
> Also, wow, 14,000 hits, that's a lot, what has this story even turned into? I feel obligated to tell you that this will probably run about 5-10 more chapters, and I really thought I'd be able to pin it down more, but my chapters have also been running long for the last 10 or so updates, so I guess you'll just have to hang on and see. 
> 
> P.S. I am actually in love with your comments. All of them.


	22. Earth's Mightiest Heroes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now with gorgeous (spoilery) [FANCOMIC](http://nohaijiachi.tumblr.com/post/46710679757/ops-i-did-it-again-sing-i-apologize-for-that) by nohaijiachi!

Tony's fingers trail through snow.

He thinks he smells forest. Decay. There’s something warm and damp nestled into the crook of his neck, something that huffs out warm little breaths against his shoulder. There’s nothing to hear but the wind rushing in his ears and Logan’s boots squeaking in the deep snow.

“Stay awake,” Logan’s voice says. “We’re almost there.”

He thinks something streaks through the sky overhead, burning gold in the night.

“No,” Logan is saying, “Come on, open your goddamn eyes, Stark –”

 

 

\- - -

\- - -

\- - -

 

 

_“ – go look it up,” Steve is spitting. “You made this war.”_

_The faceplate stays down, and that’s good, because he has no intention of listening to anything that comes out of Tony’s goddamned mouth right now, and he dearly hopes he’s hurting for this –_

_“You birthed it into existence by sheer force of will,” he hisses, and Tony stands there like a stone, and –_

_Steve should have known. He was wasting his time. Wasting his years, because Tony is a coward and Steve isn’t sure he’s ever been anything else –_

“Peter, shut up, god _damn it_ ,” Carol is saying, “He’s awake, Danny, put him _out_ –”

He feels cold. He’s bleeding out, he has to be, there are things he has to say but he can’t work his mouth to say them –

“I’m trying,” Danny grits out, “I barely – he’s –”

 _“ – fuck,” Sharon is saying, and she’s working her hand furiously between them. She digs her heels into his back. “Harder, fucking,_ oh – _”_

_Steve dips his head down to lick the sweat off her neck, and goes deeper, faster, and Sharon bears down and clamps her thighs around his waist and then she’s gasping into his neck when the radio hisses on –_

_“We need to talk,” Tony’s voice says, “If you.” Silence. “I’ll be at the mansion – ”_

_Sharon throws it against the wall, and then she’s clawing at his back and hissing into his ear, that she loves him, that she’s going to lie to Fury for him, and then he’s coming inside her and all he can think of is the lilt of Tony’s traitorous fucking voice –_

“ – clamp, clamp, clamp, _shit_ ,” someone says, and he thinks he’d be horrified, but it’s a losing battle and there’s nothing but agony spiking in his chest. Someone is holding his body _open_ , his lung is collapsing, he thinks, and the last time this happened he died –

_“ – please, don’t get up, I don’t want to hit you again.”_

_But Steve does. He really does. He wants to rip Tony’s face off, he wants to break his nose and feel the bones crunch under his hand. He wants to grind Tony’s body into the rubble. He’s going to pick himself up, never mind that his jaw is hanging off and his chest is aching, he’s going to end this, this_ nothing _between them –_

_“Cap, don’t,” Tony says, and then Steve’s head is splitting open with Tony’s fucking pulse and the only thing he can think is that he has to survive this, he has to stay alive long enough to kill him –_

“Logan, NOW –”

“I did, doc, he’s metabolized it already –”

“Did you,” Steve wheezes, and he would scream if he had the breath to do it –

“Shut _up_ , Steve,” Sam says. “You’re not helping.”

“Kill him,” he gasps, “did,” and he chokes on the end of it, because he’s dying and this is what happens, you never get to say what you need to say –

“No,” Carol says, “shut up, Steve, stop talking –“ and Stephen’s got his hands in Steve’s stomach, and he’s muttering something, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows and red with blood –

“Fix him,” Steve breathes, “Tony,” and then he’s drifting, someone’s hands are on his neck –

“Danny,” Stephen is calling, “Help me, this isn’t working –“

 

 

\- - -

\- - -

\- - -

 

 

“You fucking idiot,” Luke is saying. “I can’t believe you brought him here, did you even look for a tracker –”

Luke pulls out a knife. Tony curls in on himself, he can’t help it, but surely they won’t, surely it won’t be for him this time (knives are always for him), he can trust these people, he can, he can ( _Avengers_ , his brain pulls from somewhere he’d thought he’d lost) –

“I didn’t have a scanner,” Logan snaps. “But now we do.”

“It’s not gonna work,” Peter says. “He’s mostly machine now.”

Tony wants to scream that he’s right there, that he’s not a machine, he wasn’t, not ever, but that’s how it goes, they’ve decided already, they’d always decided what he was going to be –

“Huh,” Luke says as it beeps. “He’s – guess they killed his fancy tech. It’s just this thing in his wrist, now, help me hold him –”

And then they’re cutting into his wrist anyway, and he might be screaming and someone is telling him to shut up, Stark, we’re barely even cutting you, and why can’t they stop, why can’t they leave him alone, why can’t they just let him die –

 

\- - -

 

 _Stark_ , they’re saying. He thinks he used to be Tony.

They smell like people. Like blood and dirt and grease and desperation when they shout and run past where he’s lying without giving him a second glance. They smell like things he used to use in workshops, when he was a person and he worked with his hands. He used to build things. They used to be his people.

He rolls half off the sofa and retches onto the floor.

Someone is shouting from the other room. There are fingers on his scalp, freezing hands smoothing over his forehead, and he wants them _off_. Don’t touch me, he wants to say, but no one is going to listen. Steve didn’t.

(It’s Steve’s blood, Steve is in the other room, Steve’s blood and Tony’s fault –)

He wants to curl up and die. He thinks he needs to vomit again.

He’s seizing, again and again, because he just can’t manage what his body does anymore, because he’s just needs and fluids and pain, and it’s all he can do to just hang his head over the side and press his filthy cheek against the leather. Someone puts a bucket on the floor. His stomach is wet again, maybe. He’s always bleeding.

 _In shock_ , they say. _Blood loss_. He’s good at that. _I’m worried_ , someone says.

 _Don’t_ , he wants to say. _Don’t pretend this matters to you._

He lies there, his stomach churning, and doesn’t say anything at all.

“Ok,” someone is saying, and then someone lifts him into strong arms, because he doesn’t have opinions anymore, “torch it–”

 

\- - -

 

“ – getting through Utica. It’s a straight shot to Ontario once we get past the turnpike –”

“ – _if_ we get past the turnpike – ”

The gasoline smell is enough to make him want to puke again.

“ – I’m sorry, how is this safer? There are camps around here, they’ve gotta be using the lake for one of their reclamation projects –“

His head is in someone’s lap. They’ve laid him out, wrapped him in something itchy. He smells leather. He’s shivering, he’s sweating, he’s freezing and burning, there’s wool against his skin maybe, he’s wrapped up so tightly he might as well be restrained –

“ – that’s the city, dumbass, who taught you geography –”

He feels like he’s choking, he smells blood on whoever’s thigh it is and there’s gauze stuffed into his mouth, tucked under his lip, blood sliding hot down his throat –  

“– I’m gonna shoot you both if you two don’t shut the fuck up –”

It’s too much to worry about where they’re going (where they’re taking him), it’s too much to think about the way the vehicle is lurching and jolting and bouncing him around, because he feels so sick, and the fucking gasoline smell is too much, and he retches –

“Aw, god, fucking – you’re a pain in the ass, Stark, you know that?”

He’s shifted down, shoved away and off whoever’s lap it is, and he curls in on himself as much as his body will let him and lays his head on the cool leather and tries to breathe, tries, _tries –_

 

\- - -

 

“Do you think he’s awake?”

“I don’t really care, put him here –”

“Why isn’t he saying anything –”

“I don’t fucking know, he’s just concussed, we should go check on Steve –”

“Steve’s gonna kill us if he dies while we’re unpacking – ”

“Look, his eyes are half-open, he’ll be fine, Strange is coming –”

 

\- - -

 

“Tony,” Stephen is saying. “I need to examine you.”

His sleeves are pushed up to his elbows. He’s wearing that terrible jacket he wears. He’s lost his cape. He’s just a doctor today. It gets lost sometimes, under the mysticism.

Tony tries to remember the last time they were in the same room together. The last time they were on good enough terms to speak as Iron Man and Sorcerer Supreme without the astral plane between them, once upon a time, when they were colleagues and Tony was for talking and ideas instead of beating.

“I have to,” Stephen is saying. “And then you can sleep.” He sighs, like he does when he’s impatient, when he’d rather be elsewhere. He’s above things like this. Tony is a chore. “I’d much rather do it with your consent,” he says. “I’m worried you have internal bleeding. I suspect you need a transfusion. You’ve lost a great deal of blood.” He lifts Tony’s eyelids one by one, shines a penlight in his eyes. (It hurts.) He smells like soap, but his forearms are still bright with blood, Steve’s. Steve’s blood and his fault –

“Tony?”

Tony stares at the sheets. At the blistering burn laid over his bicep.

“Tony.”

He’s going to see.

“Anthony.”

He’s going to know.

“I need you to talk to me.”

“Is he dead,” Tony mumbles to his elbow. 

Stephen stops ripping whatever he’s ripping. “Who,” he says.

 _Steve_. “Cap,” Tony croaks.

“No,” Stephen says after a minute. “He’s stable.”

“Ok,” Tony rasps, and his face feels wet. The pillowcase is damp under his cheek.

“You’re shaking,” Stephen says, and Tony doesn’t dare let himself believe it’s kindness he hears in his voice.

“I’m sorry,” he says, because he doesn’t know how not to shake.

Stephen mutters something that sounds like Latin and probably isn’t. Tony feels it, dull at the front of his brain, then warmer, running through him with his heartbeat, and his mind goes dimmer and duller still and something like apathy replaces the sharp terror swarming in his stomach. He stops caring about how Stephen is going to judge him for what he’s let happen to him, he stops caring about the guilt snowballing in his gut and the fact that he has to live now.

Stephen is taking liberties, he realizes dimly. Stephen is using magic.

(But everyone takes liberties. He should be grateful. At least this way he doesn’t care.)

“It’s just a calming spell,” Stephen says. “Relax. It doesn’t interfere with personal agency.”

Tony stares at the ceiling with glassy eyes and thinks he doesn’t remember what it feels like to have that.

“I’m going to treat you,” Stephen says, leaning over him, running his fingers feather-light over the cuts carved into his face, over the corners of his mouth rubbed raw (Tony hates it, he hates it, he hates it). He presses on the soft flesh at the crook of Tony’s elbow, and then there’s swabbing that stings in his cuts, the sharp prick of a needle. “I’m not going to harm you,” Stephen says, as he presses medical tape against Tony’s skin. “You’re among friends.”

Tony wishes people would stop lying to him.

Stephen pulls the blanket down.

“Oh,” he breathes.

 

 

\- - -

\- - -

\- - -

 

 

“Steve.”

He’s mostly awake.

There’s something holding him. He knows he should be in pain, but he feels heavy, like they’ve got him on drugs in the quantities they’re usually afraid to use even to get around his metabolism. He can’t feel most of his body, but the memory of crunching bone and searing pain in his lungs is close at hand, and it’s enough.

He can’t _be_ this right now.

“I’m not dead,” Steve says around his tongue. “I’m not.” He tries to get up, but Carol’s hand is on his shoulder, anchoring him to the mattress. His mouth feels like cotton. There’s something between his legs, something warm. It stretches and squeaks out a yawn.

The puppy. They got it.

“Listen to me,” Stephen is saying, and Steve doesn’t know how his voice is still made of steel, after everything. He rubs at his temples. He’s greyer than Steve remembers. Everyone is greyer, he thinks, even if they don’t show it in their hair.

“Is Tony,” he says.  

“He’s alive,” Carol says.

“Is he ok,” he rasps.

“For now,” Stephen says. “We need to talk about you first.”

“No,” Steve says, distant, “Where –”

Carol walks around to the curtain and pulls it open.

Tony is passed out on his side in the adjacent bed.

He looks worse under the lighting than he did in the cave, if that’s at all possible. He’s made himself small, pulled his legs up to his chest and curled himself into a ball, because apparently he’s still terrified, even in sleep. He’s trembling in his sutured skin.

Steve feels ill.  

“I thought he’d be,” he says stupidly, because he doesn’t know what he thought Tony would be. Not here, not in the same room, not pale and dead-looking and swollen. Better, maybe. (That’s dumb, he’s not going to be better –)

“He’s sedated,” Carol says, and she pulls it shut. She moves like she’s hurting, like she’s weary. She’s fraying, he thinks. Her clothes looks blurry at the edges, like it’s too much effort to maintain them.

“And so will you be, after this,” Strange says. “Your body has been prodigiously battered.”

“I don’t need,” Steve starts to say, but Stephen isn’t having it.  

“Please,” Stephen cuts in. “Danny is currently in a self-induced coma, regenerating from healing you. And that was just to stabilize you enough to stitch your organs back together,” he says quietly.

“Why did you let him do that,” Steve says, completely horrified.

“You would have died,” Carol says flatly, and Steve doesn’t even know how to argue that –

“Your brain is reattaching itself to your skull right now,” Stephen is saying. “You lost 2 pints of blood, you have 5 cracked ribs, and a broken sternum. You barely made it through resealing your lung.”

Steve doesn’t care about his ribs, or his sternum. He’s having a problem tearing his eyes away from the curtain, from where Tony is lying. He’s having a problem forgetting how he came to be this way.

“Thank you,” Steve says, tearing his eyes away, because he’s not going to fall apart right now.

“Don’t thank me,” Stephen says, “Just do me the courtesy of not undoing all of my work, please. You need rest. Your healing factor is woefully inadequate for the damage your body has suffered.”

“Just,” Steve says carefully, “Tony. Is he ok.”

Stephen sits down, and motions for Carol to do the same, and the look on his face is enough. “I examined him,” Strange says, and Steve doesn’t like what’s in his voice, “that’s what we’re going to discuss.”

“No,” Steve says, because he doesn’t want to _discuss_ this, not right now, not ever. “Not – he’s in the damn room,” he whispers, glancing at Carol, who’s swaying like she’s dead on his feet. “Can we just –“

“Carol is here,” Strange says calmly, because he never misses anything, “because she is the leader of this group. This discussion will not leave this room, you have my word. Tony is sedated. He won’t wake until I want him to.”

“We were waiting for you to wake up,” Carol says to her hands.

“We need to discuss what he’s been through,” Stephen says. "We need to be aware-"

 _No_ , Steve thinks, because he’s seen about enough of what Tony’s been through.

“I am,” Steve says, hoping to make this go as quickly as possible. “I know.”

“Do you really,” Stephen says to his hands.  

“Yeah,” Steve says, after a minute. “I saw.”

Stephen sighs. Centers his chakras, or whatever the hell it is he does. “The Skrulls are generally more clinical,” he says. 

“It was personal,” Steve mumbles. "It was just him. The other cells were empty."  

“There wasn't,” Carol starts, “what about -“

“No,” Steve says firmly, and tells himself that it’s the morphine that’s responsible for the tears burning in his eyes. “Just him.”

“I don't know if it was one individual, or –” Stephen is mumbling. “I don’t know that it matters.”

“What does that even mean?” Carol breathes.

“I don’t,” Steve says, because how is he even supposed to answer that, how is he supposed to be able to think about that –

“What are we talking about,” Carol says, low in her voice.

“We're talking about trauma,” Stephen says. “I treated him, insofar as I sutured what could be sutured and ran an STI battery, but this is well above my paygr –”

“Trauma,” Carol chokes, “as in rape.”

“Yes,” Stephen says, “Sexual assault. Rape. For weeks. Months, maybe.” The words roll off his tongue like it’s nothing to be so dispassionate about this.

 _Months_ , Steve thinks. Months that he was dead. Months that Tony was –

“Did Tony tell you this,” he grates out, not wanting to know, hating that they have to have this conversation, hating how his face is flushing hot with shame, even now –

“No,” Stephen says, like he's talking to a child, “I hadn’t planned on having to do a rape exam. I simply –” he looks vastly uncomfortable. “It wasn't hard to infer." Stephen sighs. "He didn’t need to tell me anything.”

"Is he," Carol starts, but she doesn't know what to say, either. 

"I don't know, Carol," Stephen snaps. "Probably fairly damaged. He needs a psych eval. And therapy." 

“Then give him one,” Steve says, feeling entirely inadequate.

“I’m not a psychiatrist,” Strange says, and his eyes go glassy and distant. “And I think it would be unwise, considering – I don’t believe he has reason to trust me anymore. ”

“What the hell does that mean?" Steve says.

Stephen sighs. "It doesn't matter-"

"Who _can,_ " Carol says, her voice raw. 

“Do you see a psychiatrist?” Stephen says. “We don’t have the resources, present circumstances being what they are. He needs-” He dips his head, looking, for once, all of his years. “We need to watch him,” he says quietly, “I wouldn’t be surprised if he – ”

“If he tried to kill himself?” Steve says to his lap. “Right after –” _Right after he recognized me._ “He asked me to shoot him,” he manages.  

Stephen is quiet, and then there’s a strangled sob from where Carol’s been standing in the corner.

“Carol,” Steve says, because he doesn’t know what else to say. She looks miserable, she must have been standing there shaking this whole damn time, trying and failing to cry in silence, her face all screwed up with tears, a sweat-shirted hand pressed damp to her mouth. She sees him looking, and he should tell her it’s ok, it’s not her fault (it is) but she’s already swearing under her breath, and Carol never _looks_ like this.

She turns without a word and stalks out the door.

Stephen looks fairly guilty. “She’s dealing with a great many things,” he says with a sigh. He’s getting up from his chair at the foot of Steve’s bed. “I apologize, Captain, but I need to see to some things,” he says. “I have some concerns to allay. I won’t be longer than a few days.”

“What concerns,” Steve echoes, distant. “Where are you going?”

“Away,” Stephen says, because the Sorcerer Supreme doesn’t have to explain himself. “You should be there when he wakes up. He needs to be supervised.”

“I don’t,” Steve croaks. “That’s not a good idea.”

“I know you have your differences,” Stephen says, “but –“

“No,” Steve says, because Stephen doesn’t understand. “K – the Skrull that did this did it with my face.”

There’s an unbearably long silence.

“I'm sorry,” Stephen says, finally. “Carol always suspected there was abuse, but we didn’t think about –” He falters. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry,” Steve echoes, entirely lost. “That’s not good enough,” he chokes, “What am I – Tony is –”

“Tony has been profoundly mistreated, yes.”

“I should have,” Steve mumbles, “I touched him. I had to, I.” He blinks and blinks and fists his weak fingers in the sheets. “Dammit,” he gasps.

Stephen looks at him with what might be his own inscrutable brand of pity. “This isn’t your fault, Captain,” he says.

“It’s all of our faults,” Steve mumbles, numb and hurting and bitter. “It’s mine. It’s yours. You could have done something.”

Stephen is very quiet. “Yes,” he says finally. “Perhaps we should have acted.”

“It was never a question,” Steve says miserably, and Stephen is thumbing the wheel on the IV, upping the drip of whatever’s hooked into his arm. “It never should have been,” he slurs.

“I know,” Stephen says, just loud enough for Steve to hear, and then he’s gone.

 

 

\- - -

\- - -

\- - -

 

 

It’s quiet, when Tony wakes up.

He’s clearer. Clearer than he’s been in a long time, even with the painkillers. It’s easier and harder this way, with the magic crawling its way out of his veins. He stares lazily up at the drip Stephen’s put in his arm. He’s used to having enough pain to derail whatever thoughts he’s having, whatever guilt he’s feeling. Enough data to overwhelm him to the point of numbness.

That’s why he’s here in the first place, he thinks.

They’ve left him, with an empty chair on his right, a curtain drawn around his bedside. They’ve treated him to sheets, to warmth and cotton and a paper-thin hospital gown that itches where it touches his poor excuse for skin. He makes the mistake of looking down, of seeing the patchwork of black thread winding its way over his chest. He picks at the bandage Stephen’s taped onto his hip, pulls it back to see the weeping plasma burn that’s torn into his thigh. His breath rattles in his chest, and he feels the taut pull of string holding him together and wonders why they’d bother.

The curtain drifts a little, and he realizes it’s not his heart that’s beeping out a steady rhythm on the monitor.

 _No,_ he thinks.

He panics, and tries not to, quietly swallows down the way his heart is racing and his stomach is clenching (did they have to, did they _have_ to put them in the same room).

(Shouldn’t it be funny, that he would have given anything to have him alive again?)

He should be able to take this for what it is. An opportunity. He could amend. Or beg, at least. He could sit, until he wakes up, could sob himself hoarse one last time and make the apology (again), could let Steve scream at him for his transgressions. He could have closure. They used to wait at each other’s bedsides.

_You selfish fuck._

That was then, though.

He levers himself up to vertical, tamps down on the quiet swell of panic swirling in his chest. He pinches his arm with bandaged fingers, draws the needle out. He watches, for a while, as the blood bubbles up on his arm. He lets the tube run and drip down onto the floor, and no one comes to put it back.

Freedom, he thinks dimly.

He swings his legs over the side, because he can, pads around on impossibly shaky legs (he has _legs_ ). Stephen didn’t leave him clothes, and he tries not to think of it as punishment. He finds stacks of cellophane-wrapped robes in one of the cabinets, opens one with his teeth because he can’t use his fingers. He wraps himself in what passes for luxury now, ties the belt with shaky fingers. It’s impossibly large on his frame, but he would wear anything right now. It’s long enough to keep them from staring at his bruises.

He gathers himself, he doesn’t think about what he said (god, what he said), what Steve saw, what Steve did for him back there in the snow (what he didn’t deserve). He doesn’t think about the look in Stephen’s eyes as he sewed Tony’s body back together and listened to him sobbing, doesn’t think about the pain spiking in his pelvis every time he drops his feet.

_How could you._

Doesn’t think. He’s done.

Tony puts a hand on the door, expecting it to be locked, but it clicks open when he lets his arm fall.

Brave new world.

 

\- - -

 

He wanders through wide halls with empty walls and harsh lighting.

There are doors, on both sides, dozens, a green stripe lining the wall next to the floor. He passes other corridors branching off from this main artery. There’s exposed piping and machinery spanning the ceiling, all of it painted the same creamy white as the walls. It’s tastelessly designed, he thinks. It feels government. Military. Familiar, as if he might have been evacuated with priority to just such a place, once upon a lifetime. He wonders if there are White House survivors, they’d be somewhere like this.

He wonders if what’s left of the Avengers have joined up, and the irony makes him want to sob.

It’s strange and terrible to be upright, even though he’s unsteady. He’s not sure how long it’s been since he’s walked on his own. It’s thrilling, to stand without someone dragging him along. He’s barefoot. His feet slap on the linoleum. His heart is racing a little, and there’s warmth, climate-controlled air on his bare neck, on his calves. He relearns the weight of his body, how it feels to move his limbs.

He thinks he used to strut, maybe.

What a life that must have been.

 

\- - -

 

Luke is sitting in front of the blast doors down the last corridor.

He looks different. He has crow’s feet now, his face is harder than it was. He sits with his feet propped up on an applebox, twirling a pen between his fingers. 

Tony wonders if he should be frightened. He tries to tally. He thinks about sending Capekillers after him and programming his DNA into a Sentinel’s databank and Jessica calling him a bastard and wonders if he’ll be forgiven.

No, probably.

He decides it doesn’t matter, and ambles down the hallway anyway.

Luke looks up at him when he’s almost to the end. He shoots Tony something fleeting and appraising, like he’s almost surprised, but mostly can’t be bothered, and Tony fingers the bandages on his wrist and does his best not to be terrified.

“Luke,” he says, and it’s an effort, more of one than he expected. His voice shakes.

“Stark,” Luke says.

He wants to say things. _How’s Jessica_ and _how’s the baby_ and _I’m sorry I ruined yours and everyone else’s life_.

“How are you,” is all he ends up saying, because maybe if he pretends they’re on speaking terms, they will be.

Luke looks him up and down in his bare skin and his flimsy robe. “Peachy,” he says.

“Can I go out,” Tony says, nodding at the blast door.  

Luke stares at him like he’s insane.

“No, you can’t go out,” Luke says, and he sounds legitimately annoyed. “What the hell is wrong with you.”

Tony thinks there’s a joke in there somewhere.

“Am I being kept,” he manages, because he doesn’t know what he’s done. “Am I a prisoner?”

“I don’t let anyone out without orders,” Luke says tersely. “You don’t give the orders.”

“I just want to take a walk,” he starts, his cheeks burning with shame, fully aware of how ridiculous he sounds. _I haven’t seen the sun_ , he doesn’t say. He’d go, in his bare feet even. He’d go, even knowing no one would come after him if (when) he froze to death.

“You could work up a little gratitude,” Luke says, “seeing how we just rescued your skinny ass.”

Tony looks for his walls. He digs for what he used to have, for something to wrap himself in, the slick of arrogance and pride that made him impervious to casual malice, once upon a time.

Iron man.

He doesn’t find them.

“Thanks, then,” he says, entirely numb, and then he turns on his heel and pads back down the hallway.

He’s not going to cry over a blast door. He’s not.

 

\- - -

 

He keeps expecting to run into people, and doesn’t.

He wonders where the rest of them are. They have to be around. He’s pretty sure they wouldn’t leave Steve alone in a bunker.

There are rooms, and rooms. Corridors with locked doors. He can’t read them all. He doesn’t care. The size of the place is overwhelming, really. As boltholes go, they could have done worse. It’s probably meant to accommodate dozens of critical politicians, families, support staff. The white house seal shows up every now and then, on the walls, painted onto frosted glass doors.

He’s trying to decide if he should seek them out when he hears voices somewhere off to his left.

He follows them, because he has nowhere to go. He can’t go back to medical, not while Steve is there. He tries to pretend his heart isn’t beating out of his chest, wonders if they’ll be like Luke, if they’ll look at him like Steve looked like him, like he’s something terrible and obligatory and foul.

He rounds a corner, and stops, because there’s laughter echoing out of a set of heavy glass doors a few feet along in the wall in front of him.

Laughter. People.

He stands there, looking at his feet on the floor. It’s different here, checkered white and red. Pedestrian, he would have thought once upon a time. He smells food, something savory. He doesn’t think he could eat if he tried, but it’s been so long since he’s had anything but paste, and his mouth waters. He tongues at the tooth K’arr’n’s knocked out.

There are voices drifting through, and he toes closer, because he wants to hear more than he doesn’t.

“At least the water’s not yellow here,” Peter is saying, and Tony’s throat tightens a little.

“There was beer at the farm,” Logan says.

“There’s a liquor cabinet somewhere,” someone else’s voice says, and it can’t be, that’s not –

“Liquor’s not beer, birdbrain,” Logan growls.

“You smell like a dog,” the voice comes again, and it’s unmistakable this time.

Jesus Christ. Clint’s alive.

“You don’t need to be drinking,” someone says, hushed and strained. It’s Carol. “You’re on patrol in 2 hours.”

“I wouldn’t be if it wasn’t for –“

“Don’t start,” Carol says.

“I’ll go too,” Clint says ( _Clint_ ). “Maybe I can shoot something. Maybe you can stab something. _”_

“The point is not to piss them off, it’s to _patrol_ ,” Sam says.

“Well, there’s nothing else to do here,” Clint says curtly. “At least at the farm I got to hunt shit.”

“Would you rather they’d caught us,” Peter says quietly.

“It wouldn’t’ve been an _issue_ ,” Logan says. “If he hadn’t brought back strays –“

“The dog’s cute as hell,” Sam cuts in.

“Yeah, I’m tickled,” Logan says. “It’s almost enough to make up for carrying him back in pieces –“

“Yeah, and if he hadn’t gone at all, we’d still be back there and we wouldn’t have half the damn city looking for us –“

“What was I supposed to do, Sam,” Carol says. “Stand in the door and try to make him stay?”

“Yeah,” Sam says, “You should have, maybe, then he wouldn’t have gotten trashed out there –”

“We should have helped him to begin with,” Carol says quietly. “I should have helped him.”

“You’d be dead,” Logan growls. “It was a suicide mission, and you know it. We’d’a lost both of you.”

“Lost all _three_ of us,” she says, and her voice has gone steely and cold.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Logan says. “He was dead already.”

“I’m glad you’re so invested in our team,” Carol says.

“He’s not on our team,” Logan growls. “How do you think he survived this long in captivity, Carol?”

“Logan –“ Peter says.

“Everyone’s thinking it,” Logan says.

"They're really not," Carol says.

“How do you think he survived,” Logan says again, and no one talks. 

"You do what you gotta do," Logan says, "it's easier to be a whore than a punching bag, Carol, he doesn't have any powers–"

There’s a flash, and a bang, and a clatter, and the sound of Logan swearing.

“That’s _enough_ ,” Carol roars, and Tony actually shrinks back against the wall. “You have no idea,” she snarls. “You have no idea what they were doing to him.”

“He made his bed,” Logan says.

“He would have busted his ass trying to find you if it had been you,” she hisses.

“You lose people in war,” Logan says evenly. “You busted up my dinner.”

“Fuck your dinner,” Carol says.

There are footsteps then, approaching from the other side of the door.

His gut tells him to run, to duck into some side room, to turn on his heel and make it look like he was just passing by, but then Carol is yanking the door all the way open, and she stops dead in the doorway when she catches sight of him.

“Tony,” she says, nothing short of shocked.

He feels like he’s going to be sick.

They’re staring, behind her, tight-lipped and wide-eyed and uncomfortable. He wishes he had something real to wear, he feels their eyes raking over him. He knows how he looks. He knows there are marks on his neck, under the bandages.

Skrull whore. It’s apt enough.

“How long was he creeping on us,” someone mutters behind her, and he wants to sink into the fucking floor, he never wants anyone to look at him again –

“You’re up,” she says. “Are you – do you want food?”

“No, I just – can we walk,” Tony says, blinking furiously (not here, not right now), and he hopes she’ll give him that, at least. 

“Yeah,” she says, and she pulls the door shut behind them. “Yeah, of course we can walk, do you need help –”

“No,” he says, even though he’s very obviously limping. “I just want to walk.”  

“Ok,” she says, and she drifts along next to him. “I didn’t think you’d be up yet,” she says carefully. She’s choosing her words. She thinks he’s fragile.  

“I didn’t think you were alive,” he says honestly.

“Yeah,” she says, and it sounds strangled. “How about that.” She looks like she’s about to burst into tears, and Tony can’t help but feel like it’s his fault.

“Help me,” he says, because he doesn’t think he can stand making Carol cry, not over him. He’s not worth it.  “Help me find somewhere, ok? Somewhere quiet,” he mumbles. “Low traffic.” He dares to look up. “Clothes, maybe,” he says, plastering a grin on his face. The instinct’s kept well enough. She shouldn’t have to be uncomfortable on his account. He’s done enough damage.

She looks like she wants to say something, but she just strides on, grabs his hand, gently, pulls him farther down the hall, away from the people they used to lead, into the quiet.

“Don’t listen to them,” she says, and it sounds like she’s pleading a little. “They don’t mean it.”

He can’t help but think maybe she’s lying, too. 

 

\- - -

 

“This is a supply closet,” Carol says.

“This is fine,” Tony says quietly. It is. It’s big enough, there’s enough room for a mattress and then some. It’s got a light. There are shelves lining the walls, filled with bottles of cleaning products. A toolbox that looks like it’s never been opened. The door locks.

It’s as far from the rest of the living quarters as it could possibly be.

“I thought you wanted quiet, this is right next to the power plant –”

“I mostly meant away.”

“Tony, there’s no bed, Jesus –“

“You can bring me a mattress,” he says.

“I’ll kick someone out,” she says. “You can have my room, it’s the president’s suite –“

“No,” Tony says, quicker than he really wants to. “I don’t. Please don’t kick anyone out.” He doesn’t need to give them more ammunition. They have reason enough already.

“Don’t you want the VP’s quarters,” Carol says. “This is tiny, I know you’re used to –”

“I’m used to a cell,” Tony says, and Carol visibly pales.

“I’m –“

“I don’t need anything,” Tony says. “I don’t expect anyone to move for me. I don’t.” 

“I know,” Carol says, “I just –“

“I just want a place,” he insists. “The machines will help me sleep.”

“There’s always someone around,” she says. “If you. There’s an intercom.”

“I’m going to sleep,” he says. “I’m tired.”

“There’s no bed yet,” Carol says hoarsely.

“Carol, I just want some time alone,” Tony says. “Please.”

That’s enough, apparently. It’s the thing to say. She steps back, she drifts back through the doorway, crosses her arms and bites her lip. Eyes him like he’s damaged. Like he’ll bolt if she says the wrong thing.

“Do you need anything?” she says.

“A razor,” he says, “I could stand to shave.”

Carol looks enormously uncomfortable.

Of course. 

“I’m glad my privacy means so much here,” he mumbles.

Of course Steve told them everything. 

“Tony,” she starts, “It's not - I’ll find you something, I’m sorry, I’ll get you something electric, ok –”

“Yeah,” he says, and he feels like he could vomit just thinking about it. 

“Ok,” she says, probably thrilled that that crisis is averted. “I’m sorry, I just – I want you to be ok –”

“I’ll bet,” he says, and he can feel his walls falling down. He starts to turn away, but she’s there, her hand around his wrist, the lightest of touches, barely enough pressure to feel. 

“I'm sorry,” she blurts out, and he wants to pull away, he can't manage her fingers on his skin right now, he wants to be alone more than anything, but she’s looking at him like he’s real, like he’s a person, and it almost feels like what they used to have. “I know I can say it,” she continues, “I know I can say it and it doesn’t mean anything, but I am. I’m sorry. I should have come for you.”

She lets his wrist go, and he aches for it back.

He wants to say _don’t go_ , he wants to sob into her shoulder, he wants to tell her that she might be his only friend in the world right now.

“I’ll be down in C corridor,” she says. “If you need anything.”

“Carol,” he says.

She snaps her head back up, and that’s the worst part, maybe. She’s so ready to bend over backwards for him. She’s so desperate to make him comfortable. He swallows, and it should be easy because it’s honest, but he has to look up at the ceiling when he feels his eyes burning.

“I wouldn’t have come for me either,” he says.

She stands there, just beyond the doorway, like she wants to say something, and Tony can’t do it anymore, he can’t be the thing people pity, so he turns, as quickly as his body will let him, and presses the door closed.

He stands there, staring at the floor, wondering why he had to wake up, and he thinks maybe he hears Carol sobbing on the other side of the door.

 

\- - -

 

Tony showers, in one of the bathrooms he’s pretty sure is only meant for emergency decon. He turns the water up as high as it will go with clumsy, aching fingers, and still, it’s tepid, and he shivers and scrubs at his disgusting skin. He means to grate himself raw. He's not careful; he rips a few stitches out, where they're exposed and not taped over with bandages. He scrabbles at his neck over the bandage. He tries to scrub at the bald skin between his legs, too, but his balls feel like a bruised mess and the first stroke sends him doubling over in pain, gasping.

He doesn't look down once. 

He shrugs on the stuff Carol’s left him when he’s barely stepped out. A long sleeved shirt that swallows him up. Black boxers. Jeans that smell like dust. It’s hard to lift his legs to pull them on.

It’s not just his body, his face has changed, too. He’s a stranger, under the bruises. He looks old. He thinks he used to be dashing. Women wanted him. Men wanted him.

Except Steve, apparently. Steve knew better.

He stares at himself, at the scruff on his face he can’t shave off because they haven’t given him a razor. At the stiches holding his bottom lip together. At the mass of yellow and brown spreading out from his cheekbone where he’s been struck like a dog. At the sores rubbed into the corners of his mouth from the gag K’arr’n used to hold it open.

_Made your bed, Tony._

This is why he used to wear a mask, he thinks, as he puts his hand through the glass.

 

 

\- - -

\- - -

\- - -

 

 

“You gotta stop doing this,” Sam is saying.

He looks terrible, Steve thinks. He’s lying in an armchair he must have dragged in from somewhere, his feet hanging over the side. He hasn't shaved. He blinks sleep out of his eyes, shifts his weight enough to disturb the puppy. She jumps down, stretches her little legs out, yawns a tremendous yawn. They must have bonded while he was sleeping.

Steve pokes at his ribs experimentally, which is a terrible idea.  

He doesn’t feel gutted, though, or drugged, and the pain isn’t unmanageable, so he levers himself upright. He can do that, he realizes, he’s sitting. His ribs are still screaming, but they’re almost healed, it’s an old ache. Dull. He can push past it. He pulls up the shirt someone’s dressed him in, and he feels a little sore, but it’s barely bruised, barely red, the skin only broken by two lines of stitching. It’s already fused back together. They could probably be taken out. “How long was I out?” he says.

“3 days,” Sam says. “You almost died,” Sam says, “Yeah, no, don’t – ok, that was dumb, Steve –“

Steve is sliding the IV out of his arm. “Ok,” he says, and he’s swinging his legs over the side of the cot. “Where’s Tony,” he says, and he rips back the curtain to see his empty bed. He feels his blood pressure drop violently as soon as he’s on his feet, but Sam is there in a split-second, catching him around the waist.

“He’s fine,” Sam says, “You need to lie the hell down, ok –”

“No, I don’t,” Steve says, “He’s not fine, someone needs to be with him, he’s –”

“Forget about Stark for a damn minute,” Sam says, raising his voice over Steve’s. “Your fucking lung collapsed, Steve, you lost 2 pints of blood, Stephen had to give you a transfusion, I had my _hand_ in your _abdominal cavity_ –”

“I heard,” Steve says, and it’s more of a growl than he means it to be. He might be pushing Sam away. He might be snapping. “Where is he, is someone checking on him – ”

“Why don’t we talk about how you were dead for 12 minutes,” Sam says, and he’s trying to lead Steve back, trying to turn him around. “You don’t _listen_ , Steve, this wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t –”

“If I hadn’t what,” Steve says. “If I hadn’t done what you should have done months ago?”

Sam runs a hand over his face, like he can’t believe he has to have this conversation. “It was dumb, Steve.” he says. “You shouldn’t have risked it –”

“I did,” Steve says, shaking him off, tired of having this conversation. Wondering if he’s going to keep on having it. “I did and I’m really damn tired of everyone acting like his life isn’t worth as much as mine.”

Sam stares at him for a moment. “It isn’t,” he says simply.

Steve thinks about that for a minute, and then he punches Sam in the mouth.

He watches Sam stumble back. He watches him swipe at the blood on his lip, watches him swallow and stare and his face go from shocked to angry, to terribly, terribly betrayed. He doesn’t return the blow. He’s probably better than that.

Steve thinks he should feel bad, and doesn’t.

“Go,” Steve says. “I’m sure you have more important things to do.”

Sam stares at him.  “I guess you’re fine,” he says, after a moment. He grabs the sweatshirt he’s left on the chair he was sitting on, scoops up the puppy from where it’s cowering next to the chair. “I forgot,” he says, and he’s not looking at Steve, he’s looking at his hands. “You don’t listen to anyone when it comes to him.”

“Get out,” Steve says. “I’ll find you later.”

“I don’t want to watch you die again,” Sam says, his hand on the doorknob, the dog tucked in one of his arms.

“No,” Steve says, and he lets himself lean against the wall. “Just Tony, right?”

“That’s not –”

“Fuck off, Sam,” Steve says.

“You’re a real asshole sometimes,” Sam says.

He knocks over Steve’s shield on his way out the door, and it spins on its rim until it falls flat.  

“Yeah,” Steve says to no one. “I know.”  

 

\- - -

 

It looks more awful than Steve knows it probably is. There’s an ugly purple mass at the point of impact, stitches where the edge of his shield cut through his skin and his muscle, and the entire right side of his chest is a deep yellow. He checks himself, but the plasma burns on his stomach and his arm have apparently long since healed. The skin’s a little tender, and alarmingly pink under the dressings that they’ve taped on, but there’s nothing but a lingering soreness in his muscles. He’ll be fine in a day.

No one would ever be able to tell he was bleeding out on a table three days ago.

He wonders what kind of justice it is that lets him heal like this while Tony is torn to pieces.

 

\- - -

 

They tell him that they’re in a bunker, and Steve finds he doesn’t really care.

There’s a lot of talking. He gets the impression he’s the most exciting thing that’s happened in a while. They smile at him. They smile a lot, and look mildly disarmed when he doesn’t smile back. It’s not what they expect, from him. They want leadership. Reassurance.

They sit him down. They drag in a chair for him and throw MRE’s at him like nothing is wrong.  _Lucky we found you in time_ , they say. 

They don't mention Tony. 

“Where’s Tony,” Steve finally says. 

“Probably moping,” Logan says with a shrug.

“What does that mean,” Steve says, because his brain is already skipping ahead to guns and pills and razors. “Have you checked on him?”

“No,” Logan says, and takes a drag on his cigar.

“Well, where would he be,” Steve says, with more patience than he really feels like they deserve. “Someone needs to make sure he’s ok.” _Because I can’t_ , he doesn’t say.

“Jesus, Steve, I don’t know,” Logan says. “It’s not my turn to play fairy-sitter.”

Steve isn’t sure what happens next, but he ends up with a blade through his shoulder and his fist knuckle-deep in Logan’s teeth. Someone is pulling him off, someone strong enough to manhandle him, and then they’re actually dragging him out the door and down the hallway and into something that looks a lot like a conference room.

“Get off,” Steve says, and tries to elbow whoever it is in the face.

“Shut up, Steve,” Carol says, pushing him into a chair. “What the fuck was that.” She kneels in front of him, pulls up his shirt.

“Do you mind,” he says.

“Stop,” she says, swatting his hand away, pulling his bandage up.

“I’m fine,” he says, “would you stop - ”

She huffs out a bitter little laugh, but she must be satisfied that he hasn’t pulled any of his stitches, because she sits back on her heels.  “You’re not fine,” she says. “No one is fine.” She lets herself sink down to sit on the tiled floor. “Jesus Steve,” she says, and she settles her head in her hands. “You can’t do this to me again.”

“Carol, I’m fine,” he says impatiently. “Look, I’m not even hurt, he barely got me _–”_

“I’m not talking about Logan,” she snaps. “You almost weren’t, you almost – ” she buries her head in her hands. “I hate this,” she says, and her voice is almost swallowed up.

“I know,” Steve says. “I – oh, Carol, come on.”

Carol is crying.

He shifts down, kneels in front of her. Tries to pull her hands away from her face. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I snapped,” he tries, but Carol’s hair is sticking to her cheeks and she’s snotting and gasping and well on her way to sobbing her heart out.   

“I did the same thing,” she howls.

“What,” Steve says, because he’s fairly sure they’re not talking about Logan anymore. “What are you –”

“I was sleeping with Jess,” she sobs, “except it wasn’t Jess, and they all fucking talk about him like he’s _dirt_ and I did the same fucking thing, Steve, I did the same thing –”

“Jess – Spiderwoman Jess?” he says, but she just cries and cries and pitches forward onto his bloody shoulder.

She’s been falling apart and no one’s noticed.

“I can’t believe they did that to him,” she wails. “I can’t believe I didn’t – fucking – think it was worth it to go back. It could have been me,” she says, “It could have, _fuck_.”  

He thinks about Veranke’s whispering in his ear, her hands on his body, and his blood goes cold.

“Carol,” he says, “You gotta stop, you couldn’t have known, ok, you can't blame yourself.”

“It was never her,” she sobs, and Steve wants to set the whole damn world on fire. 

“I know,” he says, his throat rawer than it should be, and all he can see is Tony kneeling in the snow.

“She’s dead,” she says, “she’s dead and I never got the chance, I never.”

“I’m sorry,” he whispers into her hair. “I had no idea, I didn’t.”

“I’m a terrible person,” she cries. “I should have gone with you, I tried to kill him, I tried, I –”

“You’re not a terrible person,” Steve says. “You saved us both.”

“He barely eats,” she says, wiping her face on her sleeve. “I keep leaving MRE's outside his door because he never walks down to get any, he’s sleeping in one of the fucking – _closets_ , Steve, I don’t, he’s so thin-”

“I know,” Steve says.

“I want us to stop fighting,” she says. “I want it to be like it was.”

“Yeah,” Steve says. “Me too.”

“Don’t hate him,” she says. “Please don’t hold this against him, it wasn’t his fault, he just.”

“I don’t,” Steve mumbles. “I just.”

“He loved you,” she says, and it’s nothing he wants to hear.

“It wasn’t me,” he whispers.

“He loved you first,” she says, and it feels like a fucking knife to his chest.

“I don’t know why,” he says, when he can talk again. “I was terrible to him.”

“That’s not how it works,” she says.

“I don’t know what to do,” he says. “Carol, I."

“Fix it," she says, as if it's that easy. 

 

\- - -

 

Steve knows this is a bad idea.

He knows it, and still, he walks through conference rooms and the dorms and the gym and the medical bay, past the utility closet that’s barely big enough to be a cell (where Tony sleeps now), into the rooms of tubes and wires and row after row of servers that no one will ever use again. He feels like he’s going to an execution.

He owes it to both of them, he tells himself.

Tony is sitting, when Steve finds him.

He’s wedged himself in between two panels, and he’s sitting awkwardly on the floor in front of an open one, his knees tucked under him, all of his weight resting on one flank. He doesn’t have any tools, and he’s not working, he’s just looking at it.

Tony used to have places like this. He used to build places like this. He used to build.

He doesn’t look like Tony. He looks like a broken version of Tony, like some macabre echo of what he’s supposed to be, all long limbs and fatigue. His shirt is hanging off of his purple collarbone, his jeans are a little too low on his hips. His hands shake. He looks fragile in a way that he’s never looked before, and Steve can’t help but be acutely, uncomfortably aware of how much bigger he is, how Tony is sitting and he’s standing. Tony’s never needed to be big. He fights with his brain. He fights with his armor. Tony’s always wormed his way in with charm and energy and confidence. Evenly matched, that’s how they’ve been.

Except this Tony gives him one fleeting, terrified, look, and he looks like he’s wilting, and Steve feels like a predator. 

Tony scrambles up. He moves like it hurts to do it, and Steve wants to say that he doesn’t have to, but he’s already clambering off the ground on unsteady feet. He’s shaking a little. He covers his chest with his hands, and one of them is recently bandaged, leaking through with blood - the back of his knuckles this time - and Steve’s throat tightens up, because no one’s been watching him. 

“Tony,” Steve says.

Tony doesn’t smile. Tony doesn't except for the flinch that crosses his face. 

Steve presses his lips together and makes the decision not to pursue that.

“What did you do,” Steve says. “Your hand is bleeding.”

“Nothing,” Tony says, as if nothing is wrong. His voice is flat.

“Tony,” Steve says, and it’s not lost on him, how Tony tenses a little every time he speaks. “You should get Stephen –”

“No,” Tony says.

“What are you doing here,” Steve says. “Have you eaten?”

Tony stares at him.

“I’ve already been fed this week,” he says finally. “I’m not hungry.”

Steve wonders if he’ll ever stop being shocked by how terrible everything is.

“Please eat something,” he manages, and this is all wrong, this shouldn’t be his job, Tony should be taken care of by someone he’s not terrified of –

“Why are you here?” Tony asks.

“I,” Steve says, because there are a thousand reasons he’s here, and none of them are at all appropriate to say anymore, and most of them already sound terribly inadequate before they’ve even made it to his mouth. “I wanted to see how you were doing,” he chokes out.

“These generators are shit,” Tony says, because he’s doing terribly, apparently. He pulls at a cluster of wires with his shredded fingertips.

“Shouldn’t you be wearing protective gear,” Steve says. “That’s not grounded.”

“No,” Tony says. “It's not.”   

Steve is going to have words, with all of them, with whoever decided it was fine to leave him in a corner of the bunker and fend for himself, because Tony is casually working on a live wire and apparently no one’s noticed he has a death wish –

“I’ll get you some,” Steve says. “If you – if you want to work on it, I’ll –

“Don’t bother,” Tony says. “It’s not your job.”

“You don’t need to hide in here,” Steve says, as if it will make a difference, as if Tony has ever asked for help when he’s needed it instead of crawling into the dark to lick his wounds. “There are people around.”

“I’m fine here,” Tony says.

Tony is fine, Tony is barefoot and bleeding and shivering alone down here in the dark because he’s too fucking ashamed to show his face, because he’s always been too brave and proud.

“You can come out,” Steve tries, and it’s almost a whisper.

Tony doesn’t say anything.

“Tony,” Steve presses.

“What,” Tony snaps.  

“Could you look at me, at least?”

He hates it, as soon as he's said it. It’s an impossible request. It’s cruel to even ask.

Tony doesn't look at him, he just sucks in a shuddering breath and turns his face to the ceiling. “I’m glad you’re alive,” he says, and his voice shakes and he drops his head and grins like maybe Steve won’t notice he’s crumbling, like his eyes aren’t brimming with tears. “They need you,” he says.

“They need you too,” Steve says, because what is he supposed to _say –_

“No,” Tony breathes, staring into space. “I’m a selfish fuck. Remember?” He laughs, hollow and wet.

Steve’s stomach feels like it’s rotting.

“ _Tony_ ,” Steve says, “you’re not, I didn’t – ”

“It’s ok,” Tony says, as if Steve is the one who needs reassuring. “You don’t have to lie to me.”

“I’m not lying,” Steve whispers.

“I hear them,” Tony says. “They’d rather have you,” he says, and he starts to put the panel back together, holding it awkwardly between the heels of his palms because he can’t use his fingers, probably. “They hate me,” he says, perfectly calmly, and he’s wiping his eyes with the back of his torn-up fucking hand, like Steve isn’t going to see how much he’s hurting –

“They don’t hate you –”

“Why don't you ask them,” Tony says, and his voice is very small. 

Steve swallows and thinks of Sam and doesn’t say a damn thing.

“They blame me,” Tony barrels on, “For you, for - it's fair. He only stabbed you to hurt me.”

“He stabbed me to kill me–”

“He didn’t need to gut you,” Tony says, completely reasonably, “He’s stronger than you on your best day. You'd be fine if you hadn’t come after me.”

“I don’t _care_ about my stomach,” Steve says, “I _am_ fine, I made the _decision_ to come get you –“

“Because they wouldn’t,” Tony snaps, and then he catches himself, folds his face back into his horrible mask of calm. He smiles, tight and pained. Looks at Steve, not in his eyes, but somewhere over his shoulder. “I don’t blame them,” he says. “I fucked them all over. I would have left me too.” He laughs again, and this time, when he looks up, his cheeks are shining with tears. “I guess I don’t have secrets from you anymore.”

Steve wants to scream.

“Ask me,” Tony says casually. “I’m sure you want to know.”

Of course he wants to know, of course he never wanted to know, he never wanted to know how bad this could get (how bad any of this could possibly be) how it’s all because of his blond fucking face –

“Ask me what I did,” Tony says. He sets his jaw and keeps his blue eyes open and tries, so very desperately, to be brave and callous. “Ask me why I whored myself out. Ask me if it was _worth it._ ” 

Steve is lower than shit.  

He wishes he had known. He wishes he’d known that it only takes one, one lie, one misunderstanding, one goddamn disagreement (one war) to tear down all those years spent picking each other up. Because he’s _done it_ , now, and he can’t un-do it. He did this. They used to be something. They could have recovered from this, once upon a time. (They.) There are things he should say. There are apologies he should make. Ways to – ways to explain. He could fight. He could say he didn’t mean it. He could tell him. He could say that he was hurting too, that –

Except he did mean it.

And Tony is standing there, shaking and sullen and absolutely determined not to let Steve see him fall apart again, and all Steve can think is that he owes Tony more than lies, probably.

He steps forward, because he’s not thinking like he should be for this new life after K’arr’n, because it’s too hard to have nothing when you had something, and his body _wants_ , and–

Tony recoils like he’s been struck.

“Tony,” he says, before he can help himself, and Tony closes his eyes and presses his lips together and inhales sharply and it’s _awful_ , because Tony has a fear response to his face and his voice and _him_ –

“Don’t,” Tony says sharply, like he can’t stop it from coming out of his mouth. “Just – don’t.”

“There are things I want to say,” Steve says, halfway to tears he most certainly isn’t going to let Tony see, “Please, Tony –”

“Stop saying my name,” Tony says, smiling his terrible desperate smile. “You should go. This isn’t helping.”

“Tell me what will,” Steve presses. “What do you w–”

“Not this,” Tony says, wiping at his eyes. “Not from you.”

“I forgive you,” Steve blurts out, because it's all Tony's given him to go on, because it's all he can think to say, because he still hasn’t managed to stop being a terrible person, and Tony looks like he’s been slapped.

Steve watches his face go from wide-eyed fear to something approaching desperate shame and then entirely blank. He turns his back, sinks back down to the floor. Shrinks back into himself. Stares at the bulkhead he’s just put back together. Does something that looks a lot like cowering.

“Please go,” Tony says to his knees. “I don’t want to look at your fucking face.”

“Tony –”

“GO,” Tony screams.

Steve flees. He turns on his heels, and he walks, he walks through the rows of generators and doesn’t look back, and his stomach is churning and his heart aches, because that was his chance. That was his chance, and he can’t get anything right, and he wants to take back everything awful he’s ever said, everything punch he’s ever thrown, every silence that should have been a promise –

He stops, in front of the massive door, blinking tears out of his eyes, feeling like a villain.

He thinks he hears crying over the hum of machines.

He walks away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry I've been gone. Apparently my body is falling apart. Whatever. BUT I wrote you an extra-long chapter to make up for it. 10,000 words! That's not ridiculous at all!
> 
> Here, go look at this [photoset](http://starkoholic.tumblr.com/post/45397289812/tonywhatareyoudoing-starkoholic-sins-of) and cry some more.


	23. Twilight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There are tags. You should read them.
> 
> Now with gorgeous (massively spoilery) ARTS by [nohaijiachi](http://nohaijiachi.tumblr.com/post/47473381471/since-at-this-point-it-has-basically-become-a) and [torstai-kilpikonna](http://torstai-kilpikonna.tumblr.com/post/48337190011/inspired-by-chapter-23-of-tonywhatareyoudoings) and [quickIe](http://quickle.tumblr.com/post/47396537245/this-is-fanart-for-my-current-obsession-i-deeply)!

The bunker is nicer than any of them deserve.

It’s meant for higher-ups, Steve can tell, it’s the kind of quiet luxury that no one heard about and everyone loved to be scandalized about when it came to light, leather chairs in the lounges and recessed lighting. It’s nothing like the bunkers during WWII, nothing like the one he met Roosevelt in once upon a time. It’s a carryover from times of civility. He supposes that’s the point. Project an image of calm and that’s what you’ll get, pretend the world isn’t falling apart around you and it will be enough to hold you together.

That’s what got them here, after all.

He’s stalking. His bootfalls are loud in the empty hallways as he takes himself as far away from Tony as he can possibly go. He reaches up a hand to swipe at his eyes, feels the scratch of his stubble and the smooth new scar where K’arr’n’s knife has found his face.

He needs to stop being this, he thinks, as he lets doors slam shut behind him. It’s indulgent, he knows, but if there was any justice he’d be sorting this out with the business end of his shield, out, in the wreck of the world. He feels like he did before he died, all rough edges and precipitous control, and he should be _better_ , but he’s not.

He should be, but Tony is still enough to take him to pieces.

His face is still enough to take Tony to pieces. 

His face is the problem, and there’s nothing he can do to change it, his face and his voice and his perfectly blond body, it’s a thousand cruel things he’s said that he never thought about as much as he should, negligence and indifference and –

“Steve.”

He’s going to go back. He’ll stay here for a few more days, he’ll study what intel they have. Resupply. Then he’ll go.

“Steve,” Maria yells, and he hears her footfalls behind him. He can’t quantify just how much he doesn’t want to talk to anyone right now.

“Not now,” he says, and keeps walking.

Maria, as ever, is not willing to let it go.

“Steve,” she says again, and puts a hand on his shoulder to turn him.

“What,” he snaps, shrugging her arm off.

“Jesus,” she says, turning half her body away from him. He sees, then, how she’s got the damn dog tucked under one of her arms, how they’re both looking at him like he’s a volatile thing.  

Maria bends, at the knees, eyeing him warily, and deposits the puppy on the ground in a pile of enormous paws. “Are you crying?”

“Yes,” he says. “What the hell do you want.”

She looks shocked for about half a second, and then she smoothes her face over, brushes her grown-out hair behind one of her ears. “You need to debrief,” she says, stiff and somehow exasperated at the same time. “We need to go over your intel on New York.”

“I don’t have intel,” he says, turning away. “It’s lost.”

“Hey,” Maria snaps. “I know you’re in the middle of a lover’s spat, but this is bigger than you, Rogers. You owe us that much –“

Steve whirls around. “Shut your goddamn mouth,” he snaps.

Maria stares at him while the puppy sticks its head between her legs.

“Struck a nerve,” she says after a minute, like she’s a thousand levels above whatever bullshit he’s having, and Steve is _done._

“I don’t owe you _anything_ ,” he says. “I did exactly what I said I was going to. I got in, I carried him out of a fucking dungeon on my goddamn back while he bled all over my shirt –“

“That’s touching,” Maria says. “You know, you pissed off the whole fucking city and brought them down on us –“

“ – good –”

“ – the least you could do is –”

“ – is WHAT,” Steve yells, and it’s loud enough to echo down the hallway, but he doesn’t even care. “It’s not like you have the forces for an assault, it’s not like you’re gonna do anything but cower here –”

“Give it _up_ ,” Maria says, “get off your fucking high horse and quit pretending you’ve never made tactical decisions you didn’t want to make, it was a _call_ , Steve, it’s done –“

“ _IT WAS THE WRONG CALL,_ ” Steve roars. “He was not a tactical decision, he’s a _human being_ , we all owe him our lives a hundred times over, what is _wrong_ with you all –“

“Do you know what he did?” she says incredulously. “Do you know the extent of the damage he did while you were in a stasis tube in Fury’s basement, there are a thousand things he ignored–”

“GROW UP,” Steve spits. “Where the fuck were you, where were you when he was drinking himself to death on the Helicarrier, where do you _get off_ blaming him for this like you weren’t all played too –”

“He put his personal life before the security of the planet, if there was _ever_ a time for professionalism, _that was it_ –”

“ – he’s _PAID FOR IT_ ,” Steve all but screams. “Have you seen him, Maria? Have you looked him in the eye? Why don’t you go down to his _closet_ and tell him, tell him he deserves what’s happened to him, go cut him down a little more because _THEY HAVEN’T DONE ENOUGH._ Go tell him you’d rather I’d have _shot him_ when he asked me to –”

“Maybe you should have shot him,” she snaps. “Because we don’t have time for this bullshit, you have a responsibility, what are you – _fuck_ – ”

He feels himself lose control, he feels his body moving, and then she’s up against the wall and his broad forearm is pressed against her throat. “How dare you,” he says.

“Get your hands off me –“

“I could kill you,” Steve hisses, and he presses a little harder, and it should be alarming, how much he doesn’t care right now. “You know, don’t you, wasn’t it your job to read up on me when you _hunted me down_? You know how easily I could snap your neck.”

“Steve –“

“You should stop talking, Maria.”

Maria stops talking.

“Listen carefully,” he says. “I’m done.”

She wiggles a little, and he thinks maybe she looks afraid, but Maria is Maria and she’ll deal with it, because this has to be said. “Steve,” she starts, “just –”

“I’m not your _leader_ ,” Steve shouts, because he doesn’t care, and she flinches back against the wall at the volume of his voice. “I’m not your Captain, I don’t owe you _shit_ and I’m not fixing your mess. You’re on your own.”

“Steve –”

“I’m not _finished_ ,” he hisses. “You tell them,” he says. “You tell them to cut the _bullshit_ and treat him like a goddamn person.” 

“We’re not –”

“YOU ARE,” he says. “Tell them.”

There is alarm, in Maria’s eyes, there is a terror he doesn’t think he’s ever seen there before, and it occurs to Steve that this is what Tony sees every time he looks at him. It sinks to his stomach, and he pulls his arm away and hates how hard it is to do, watches Maria grab her throat and put 2 yards between them and bring her hand to her hip where her gun is.

He hates that he’d like to actually hit her.

“What did he do to you,” Maria says, looking at him like he’s a stranger.

The puppy is shaking, pressed up against the wall. Steve can hear, now that he’s not yelling, how she’s whining and whimpering and terrified of his outburst. 

Steve presses his eyes shut and tells himself he’s not going to be this. This is why this happened to Tony, this is why no one could tell, this is him snapping, this is –

“Tell them,” he says again, bending to pick the dog up. It clings to him, trembling fluff that claws at his shirt and hides its delicate little face in his armpit.

“You tell them,” she says.

“I’m not gonna be here,” he murmurs, and he takes off back down the hallway.

“Where are you,” she gasps, “where are you going?”

“Away,” he says.

“We need you,” she wheezes behind him. 

“Funny,” Steve says, and he doesn’t look back this time. “I just can’t seem to care.” 

 

_\- - -_

_\- - -_

_\- - -_

The lights go off after a while. 

He doesn’t know how long he sits there, feeling the metal grate through his too-thin skin and rub against his jutting bones, wondering if Steve will come back. He doesn’t know when he gets up, except he does, because his limbs haven’t learned how to die yet.

There are so many things he has to re-learn. Clothes, how he doesn’t fill them out, how he winces when the non-weight of fabric catches against his stitches and pulls at his skin, when it moves soft against him and feels like the touch of a hand, when the collar brushes his neck like someone is going to choke him. Thousands of things, real things, inconsequential things he has to reintegrate into his reality, rooms and people with human skin and shame that rolls off him in waves for everyone to choke on. Pain, when he moves, enough to double him over and rip his breath from him, stabbing pain that shoots up his spine when he drops his feet and leaves him panting and cursing his pathetic fucking body and wishing fondly for a time when he had to electrocute himself twice a day.

He can’t even pretend he’s a machine, now.

He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to be, now, but he’s pretty sure it’s incidental, whatever it is. He’s a loose end that no one knows what to do with, a gangly bleeding thing that Steve’s dragged himself down here to pity.

He doesn’t know what he was supposed to do.

Not succumb, probably.

His best has never been good enough for Steve.

He hadn’t earned anything. He hasn’t, ever, he hasn’t earned a fucking thing, that’s why this happens to him. Second chances and he screws them up, not the cave, not after Obadiah, it always comes crashing back down, people die and Tony tries with all his heart and it never fucking _matters._

It was a trap, he thinks, as he fumbles at the handle to his closet, of course it was a trap, it was always going to be an indiscretion, Tony’s desperate indulgence and Tony’s shameful tryst, of course Steve blames him, of course Steve would never stoop to Tony’s level, of course he’d never lie in Tony’s bed and fuck him like he meant anything –         

He shouldn’t have waited for that conversation. What a – _fool_ he is, he thinks, as he rips his sheets all to fuck with his bleeding fingers, what a fucking idiot he’s been to try (fail) to pick himself up and think that he could stand like a man again and pretend to be Steve’s equal.

Like loving him could ever matter when it’s led to this.

His mouth tastes like ash and cotton and bitterness and there's blood dripping down his wrist, and all he can feel is the phantom graze of cruel hands on his body as he measures and twists cotton between his fingers, Steve’s hands (Steve’s never touched him), Steve, who _forgives_ him, Steve who sees right through him to how he’s ruined them both and looks at him with _how could you_ and _why couldn’t you control yourself_ and _I don’t know who you are_ in his terrible blue eyes.

He knows who he is. He’s a pile of limbs, Tony’s limbs, Tony in a pile, blood and vessels and savaged flesh and nothing more. Tony, ripped from the machine and put in his place, dragged back down to what he was by the face that always should have done it. Redemption doesn’t mean anything when you’re already a pile of bones.

He wonders who’s going to find him. He prays it won’t be Carol.

He drifts off, barely breathing, and goes to find a chair.

 

\- - -

 

He aches, and the chair doesn’t even weigh 10 pounds.

The effort it takes to drag it down the linoleum-lined hallways is laughable. He’s snagged it from one of the offices that wasn’t locked, a few corridors down from the power plant. It’s tall enough, he thinks. It’s more for him than it is for physics’ sake. He doesn’t need the drop. He needs the gesture.

He swears his heart is slowing down. 50 meters, and the world is narrowing to tensile strength and weight lost and body mass, 40 meters and this is simpler than sorting out all the things he’s broken, 30 meters and he’s slipping into carefully focused _relief_ _–_

“Tony.”

His feet stop, and all he can think is _leave me the fuck alone_.  He shouldn’t have to talk to anyone. This is for him, he should get this, at least, this is all he’s fucking asking for –

“What are you doing?”

He makes his feet stop, pulls his gaze up from his disgusting hands staining the wood red and drags his body around to face Peter.

Peter is wearing his suit, the old blue one. Tony wonders if they all do that now, if that’s what their lives have become, raid after raid, running until they can’t anymore, sleepless nights bleeding into fatigue and desperation. He’s not wearing his mask, of course, because Peter’s always preferred doing things face to face.

He meets Tony’s eyes, and Tony finds he can’t look back. It’s alarming to see him carved up and hardened like this, exhaustion written into the planes of his face, and Tony bites his lip and looks away, lets his gaze drift to the stubble on Peter’s jaw and the shadows under his eyes that make him look far older than he ever should have looked. He’s sorrier than Peter will ever know, for that.

“Peter,” he says, and it’s still humiliatingly hoarse. He thinks he might have said _Pete_ once upon a time, but that was then and this is now. He’s lost the privilege, he’s sure.

Peter shifts his weight, and it’s not at all loose and fluid like he used to be. He favors his left side. He hunches a little. There’s a scar that dips behind his ear that Tony can see when he ducks his head. “Do you need help,” Peter says, nodding warily at the chair.

Tony wants to laugh, because he could do here it in the hallway and no one would even fucking care.

He doesn’t laugh, but he feels his mouth curl up in a bitter smirk before he can stop it from happening. “No,” he says. “What do you want.”

Peter’s face darkens at that for the briefest of moments, but then it clears, and it’s back to bottomless fatigue, carefully metered. “I’ve thought a lot about what I’d say to you,” he says quietly. “I didn’t think you’d be alive.”

“You know me,” Tony says, feeling dark and cold and pathetic. “I just won’t die when I’m supposed to.”

Peter stares at him. “Quit feeling sorry for yourself,” he says.

It’s better, it’s so much better than pity. It goes straight to Tony’s throat, it’s so unfair and so what he needs, and he shuts his eyes and works his mouth into a thin smile and opens himself up to more. “Anything else?” he mumbles.

“Everyone’s suffered,” Peter says. “Not just you.”

_You don’t get to be a martyr for this, Tony –_

It’s hard for him to swallow around what he wants to say. “I know,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

“Stop,” Peter says with a sigh, and Tony swallows down the apology he wants to make, because Peter deserves one, a better one than he can come up with, probably. “I’m not interested.”

“What should I say, then,” Tony says. He is pathetic, so very pathetic for even asking. 

Peter stares at him like he’s not even worth the attention, with something that feels uncomfortably like pity mixed up in disgust, and Tony stands there in the harsh light with his clothes falling off him and wishes he would leave so he can drag himself off to die without onlookers to spit their grievances at him before he goes.

“You haven’t even asked about them,” Peter says.

“About who,” Tony says, like it’s not a slap, “is MJ –“

Peter laughs, low and cold, and it’s nothing Tony’s ever heard come out of his mouth.

“MJ is dead,” he says, “Jarvis shot her.”

Tony feels like he’s going to be sick.

“Jarvis was a Skrull,” he chokes. “Pete, I’m so –“

“Yeah, thanks, we got that,” Peter says. “You have no idea. You haven’t asked who we’ve lost.” He looks at the ceiling. “You don’t even care, do you.”

Yes, he cares, of course he wants to know, of course he’s been sitting in the dark because he can’t possibly face them all, this is bad enough –

“Of course I care,” Tony mumbles, “I –“

“Yeah, I'm sure. Except it's always been all about you,” Peter says dully.

Tony works his mouth uselessly for a minute. “I care,” he gets out finally. “Who –“

“Pepper,” Peter says, like he wants to spit it out but he’s too sad to manage venom. “Rhodey. Your _friends._ ”

Tony’s heart stops for a few minutes, because he’d been assuming.

“I – are they here?”

Peter looks at him for a long moment. “They’re dead,” he says.

Of course they’re dead, he thinks, as his stomach sinks and sinks, and he feels like a traitor for thinking maybe that’s better. He wants to ask how they died, how long ago, if it was terrible, if it was his fault (yes), if they hated him at the end, too.

(Pepper with the sad little smile she gets and Rhodey with his mouth curled into disgust and Tony with his bruises and marks –)

He doesn’t ask anything. “Ok,” he says, because all he can manage is miserable acceptance when people die, now, and Peter’s face falls into something between disappointment and disbelief and disgust. “Jan’s dead, too,” Peter continues, as if he can’t help it, “it’s just a handful of us, now. Hank was a Skrull, he’d been injecting her with Pym particles. Natasha, too. James Barnes. Reed.”

“I didn’t,” Tony whispers, and it never hurts less, it should but it doesn’t, “I,” but then he loses his voice and his walls are falling down, and he needs to lock himself away –

“I still don’t know why he saved you,” Peter says. “He’s probably better than all of us.”

 _I don’t either_ , Tony doesn’t say.

“Don’t drag him down with you,” Peter says, like Tony might as well be gutter trash. 

Tony can feel the blood draining from his face. He looks at his feet and wonders if Peter is trying to be cruel, if he’s irreparably damaged now, too. He’s not sure it matters. He’s just as perceptive, still. Always says what Tony needs to hear.

“I didn’t ask anyone to,” Tony starts, and then he shuts his mouth because he is, he drags down, he sinks his filthy hands into good things and ruins them.

 _Don’t fucking cry,_ he thinks.

The silence stretches painfully between them like they’re strangers (they may as well be, now), and Peter runs a hand absently through his hair and sighs. “I – that’s not what I came here to say,” Peter says, and he sounds almost ashamed.

“Okay,” Tony mumbles.

“I understand,” Peter says. “I get that it was bigger than you.”

Tony doesn’t say anything, because no, it wasn’t.

“I wanted to trust you,” Peter continues, “This shouldn’t – ok, back up. I really thought – when you took me to Washington, I thought – I mean, I thought that it was gonna suck, ok, but I didn’t think it would _matter_.” He sighs. “I was dumb enough to think you actually trusted me.”

“I did,” Tony says, “I trusted you.“

“No,” Peter cuts in, “you didn’t.”

“Peter –“

“You manipulated me,” Peter says quietly. “You had a dozen people who would have helped you and you had to play me like a pawn instead.”

“I –”

“You were on a team, Tony.”

Were.

“Who does that,” Peter says, and he runs a nervous hand through his hair. “Who sits on something like that and _keeps it to themselves_ until they _can’t_ anymore?”

“I didn’t –“

“You did,” Peter snaps. “I was convenient. I met your damn _agenda_.”

(It’s karma, it must be. Use and be used –)

“You could have trusted Steve,” Peter says, and he sounds broken. “You could have gone to him, at least.”

_Don’t you trust me, Tony?_

“We could have prevented this if you’d just acted like a person and _talked_ to us from the beginning-”

Tony turns around, because he doesn’t have to listen to this, because if Peter knew everything he’d done, if he knew everything that was done to him, it would be different, he would be kinder (he would kill Tony if he was kind enough, maybe). Tony wars with that, silently, painfully, drifts between needing to scream it out and _please don’t let him know_ , but there’s a dark room and a rope waiting for him and he grabs the chair and drags it along –

“Hey,” Peter says, almost sharply, and there’s a web around his wrist.

Tony knows he means it casually, but he can’t help it, the way his heart is pounding out of his chest suddenly and the uncontrollable urge to sob rises up in his throat. He’s opening his mouth to say something embarrassing and inadequate when Peter _pulls_ and turns him back around like he’s a puppet.

He bites it down, the urge to scream and sink to his knees and _run_ so no one can lock him away, but he feels like his heart is going to beat out of his chest and he feels like he needs to throw up and he can’t think anything but no no no no no no –

“You did a lot of shitty things,” Peter says, “but you didn’t deserve what happened to you.”

Tony would laugh if he weren’t about to sob, if he wasn’t still scrabbling his fingers uselessly at the stuff where it’s adhered to his wrist. “You say the nicest things,” he chokes, like a spine is still a thing he has.

“That doesn’t mean I’m ready to forgive you,” Peter says, and that’s when Tony flees.

 

\- - -

 

_Tony can’t even manage terror when they come for him._

_It’s not K’arr’n’s usual entourage, either, but females, this time, with cold faces and predatory smiles, but they just drag him down the hall and soap him with real soap that stings where he’s been sliced and lather his hair and run their hands everywhere while he balances on his toes and hangs from the ceiling. He lets his head be held and turned as they shave him with a real razor, and he closes his eyes in humiliation when they pull him taut and run it between his legs, too. He’s halfway to dull panic when they dab perfume behind his ears and pull his arms back behind his back and clamp the metal back around his neck and lead him up to the penthouse wearing nothing but chains._

_“He’s gone for now,” she says. She’s standing in the bathroom, his bathroom, 6 feet of green skin and rubies on the grey tile, and he shivers and stares at nothing and doesn’t think about how he used to live here. “I sent him away,” she says, and she saunters up to him, runs her fingers over his skin like she owns him (she does), drags them between his legs and up to roll one of his nipples between her fingers. “I wanted to try you.” (He’s for trying.) “He does so love to play with you.”_

_She swipes a finger between her legs and brings it to his mouth. “Open,” she hisses._

_He tells himself he’ll be dead soon and opens his mouth._

_“I know of your arrangement,” she’s saying, as he blinks and stares at the wall, as she dabs herself on his tongue and he tries to remember how to work his throat to swallow. She slips a finger under the satiny hem of her robe and slides it off, off onto his floor (he thinks clothes used to be for discarding). She leans on the sink, perches up on her toes. Spreads her legs. “You don’t get a choice this time,” she says, and points at the floor between her feet._

_(On your knees, Tony.)_

_He stares at his feet. “I don’t,” he hears himself say with what’s left of his voice, “I, please don’t make me do this.”_

_It’s hands in his hair, then, wrenching his neck back to make his chains clink on the tile. “You’re precious,” she says, and twists one of his nipples until he’s screaming and flinching up on the balls of his feet. “I can give you away,” she says. “If you won’t pleasure me, I’m sure I have generals who would be happy to buy you.” Her hand drifts down between her legs, and she strokes and her face goes feral and slack. “I’m sure he’d try to buy you back,” she says, and a soft laugh makes it out of her throat._

_It doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t, it doesn’t mean anything and his cheeks are wet anyway and his face is burning with shame and he sinks to his knees on his goddamned floor like a fucking slave –_

_“Have you lost your taste,” she says, and she grabs his bruised chin and tilts his face up because he’s crying and not using his tongue, “have you forgotten how to pleasure a woman, Tony Stark?”_

_She’s blurring, because he isn’t going to do this, and he wonders, distantly, if she’s going to punish him for crying. He stares at her legs, at her body vaguely glistening with oil, at the slick mess she’s dripping down her thighs. That’s for him, now. For him to clean up. It’s his function._

_(Flesh to play with. That’s all he is.)_

_It doesn’t mean anything, it doesn’t –_

_“No,” he mumbles. “No, I haven’t.”_

_“I thought not,” she says, and she tangles her fingers in his hair and brings his head to settle between her legs._

_What can he do._

_He feels her perfectly smooth skin against his beaten face, he closes his eyes and reduces his world to the slick of his tongue and her taste and the metal locked against his throat. It could be Ru, it could be Maya (he used to, out of love, out of affection, he used to be more than this, they used to fist their fingers in his hair and moan his name and mean it), it could be Steve, he’d do this for Steve, and he’s losing his breath, he can’t cry and suck at the same time. “Work,” she says, because he’s slacking, because he doesn’t know how he can (he doesn’t know why he opened this door when he said yes to K’arr’n), so she pulls his hair hard enough to rip and he gasps into her body and she moans, and he doesn’t remember what it’s like to taste anything but blood and sex -_

_“I could keep you,” she says, and she holds his head down, and he wants to sob that she doesn’t need to, he will, he will and he is and he can’t but he does. “I find you pleasing.”_

_He does it. He does it, he laves her with his mouth and buries his face in her until his chin is covered in her slick, swipes his tongue into her body like she’s everything he’s ever wanted and all he can taste is salt and acid and that bitter tang, and then she’s clawing at him, drawing her feet up off the floor and clamping her thighs around his head, and quivering under his tongue and he hates everything he’s ever been–_

_He doesn’t know how it happens, but she leads him back, coaxes him up onto his grey fucking silk sheets, wraps the chain around her slender green hand. “Beg me,” she says, still breathless, and she lays herself out on the sheets and yanks on his leash hard enough that he falls onto all fours on top of her. Tony feels dark at the edges, like he’s sinking, like he may very well pass out at having to hold himself upright. “Beg me for the privilege,” she says, her cheeks flushed dark with green, and he doesn’t know what she means until she grasps his hand in hers like he’s her (like they’ve shared something) and brings it to rest on his cock, and he can’t, he can’t, he won’t –_

_“I can’t,” he says, and his voice cracks at the end, “I can’t,_ oh _,” he whimpers, because she’s squeezing and pulling and it hurts and he stops trying to be brave. “Please,” he gasps out, and he’s crying but he doesn’t know how not to, “please let me, let me -” She pulls him down for a kiss, and he opens his mouth to her ravenous tongue, and he thinks_ no _and_ what did I do _and_ please don’t let me come _._

_"Please what," she says, and pinches him until he chokes down a scream._

_"Please let me do this for you," he says. "Let me please you," he tries, and it must be the right thin, because she pulls on his leash and spreads her legs wide, wide, wide._

_He moves, like the puppet he is. No, and he’s reaching down anyway to touch himself, no, and he’s leaking and dark, he’s for servicing, he’s parts and metal and no one wants him as a man. She’ll sell you away, he thinks, as he takes himself in hand and gets himself hard, this is better, he thinks, as he stares at the wall and not her face, as he nudges her knees open with his and his chains clink, let me die, he thinks as he slides into her and imagines it’s Ru and Chris with his blue eyes and Steve gasping his name._

_Iron man._

_“Isn’t this better,” she says, scrabbling her fingers against his back. “Isn’t this better than letting him savage you?”_

_Blink it away, he thinks, you’re a body. Bodies move. You used to love this –_

_“Harder,” she commands, and he rolls his hips mechanically (it doesn’t mean anything) and grinds into her like this is what he’s for, like she wants all of him instead of just his mouth and his hands and his cock. He lowers his head, a bitter taste in his throat, he breathes into her neck like she’s a lover because it’s easier, because that’s all she has to be and then it’s back to his cell, back to the blood and the burning and K’arr’n fucking his face. He can be this, there’s no one to see him, no one has to watch, Steve is dead in the ground and he’ll never know–_

_He doesn’t make a sound when he comes inside her, and he can't tell if it's pride or shame._

 

\- - -

 

Tony is going to stop feeling sorry for himself.

He’s going to stop, because all those people he used to be are relics, all that brilliance and talent and cunning he used to throw around like it was nothing, he’s lost, somewhere between pretending he was ever allowed to trust his heart to anyone and ripping everyone he’s ever cared about apart and begging for the honor of being a plaything.

Once upon a time, when he was an inventor and thought about the future, when there were people to pull him out of the dark and tell him he was making a difference. Pepper and Rhodey, who carried him when they didn’t have to, who stood him up and brushed him off even though he’d rather be curling up to die. They’d be so proud. (Were they proud of him, before they went?) They’d tell him, probably, that he’s made the difference now.

That it’s the difference of mortality figures and blood ground into his palms and friends and lovers erased from the face of the earth.

Hero, he thinks.

He’s shaking out of his disgusting skin as he drags the chair into his closet and presses the door shut behind him, and still, it’s not even the merest fraction of any fear he’s felt these past months. That’s fine, that means he’s doing something right this time, because nothing easy is ever right, nothing easy is ever good. Nothing good is ever for him. 

The ceiling is low. 3 feet, 5 inches is long enough for how thin the strip he’s torn is. He wraps another scrap into the twist, makes it wider and padded where it will sit around his bruised neck and press his air away. His arms ache to reach up to the ceiling, and he has to try three times to get it over the exposed piping, but the knot is simple enough to pull tight, though he has to use the soft heels of his hands and the webs of his thumbs to do it. He rubs his blood into the cotton and thinks about tethers and crawling and the feel of the floor on his bare knees.

He thinks about hell.

He turns the lights off, it’ll be less gruesome (barely) for whoever comes in. He locks the door, and the rope he’s made dangles, waiting. There’s light enough to see by, filtering in through the bottom of the door, coming off the emergency lighting built into the floor that never goes off. He doesn’t need to see for this.

He makes his body pull his weight up, climbs on unsteady legs onto wood, slides his feet back on the seat. He can’t feel his heart beating, he can’t find the pulse in his neck. He thinks that’s wrong, that that’s important, that a heart is a thing you’re supposed to be able to feel one last time. He worries, that he’s lost too many brain cells to have done the math properly, that he’ll lose his nerve (what nerve) and tear at his neck before he’s dead, that he was too far gone for too long, too much machine for this to work as if he were still human.

He’s so very weak.

There is a sob, working its way up in his throat, and he clamps his mouth shut and ignores how his eyes are burning again. This is decisive, he tells himself as he stands there quivering in his bare feet and pulls the knot down to rest against the side of his neck. Men make decisions. He tries to remember who told him that people are defined by their choices as he trembles in the dark and listens to the sound of his wheezing lungs and the faraway hum of the generators.

He just has to kick.

What if - 

His brain keeps firing, because it hasn’t learned to die, either, didn’t get the memo that it was supposed to go offline when they took the Extremis out. He’s back in Tokyo, standing over Rumiko’s grave, he’s at the mansion with Steve at his side, he’s in a cell watching the life leave Maya’s eyes. He grabs the rope with both hands, and he could be holding on to someone real, he could be clutching at K’arr’n’s ankles or holding Steve’s hands –

What if he goes to hell. 

He feels his heart again, and he thinks now would be the time to pray.

He tries to remember the words, but all he can think is that it doesn’t matter, all he can think is that prayers are for people that aren’t him, for people that fight instead of begging on their knees to make the pain stop. Not for him, because of course he’s going to hell and he was always going to hell because Tony is petty, Tony is a traitorous leech, Tony never should have loved or fought his way out of that cave or pretended to be a hero or stood alongside any of them, because he’s _nothing_ , he’s lower than shit and he can’t he can’t he can’t –

_Kick –_

He screams, like he’s having his heart ripped out, like he’s dying, like K’arr’n is cutting into him, and no one opens the door. He screams, like it’s clawing its way out of his chest, until his voice turns to a rasp and his throat is raw and he can’t scream anymore. He is sobbing, as he slides the fabric over his head, he is thinking of what life used to be, he is thinking _coward_ and _selfish_ and _trash_ , he is terrified of hell and terrified of life and unbearably weary of both.

He would give anything, he thinks, as he slides down to a miserable crouch, to be strong enough to even kick the chair away.

 

\- - -

 

The first shot comes back up.

He coughs and coughs until he’s spitting onto the floor and his throat is burning because he’s aspirated some of it. It’s not even shitty stuff, it’s good enough to be in the President’s liquor cabinet, it’s just that he’s pathetic now. His throat has been used a thousand times and he can’t handle a shot.

He pours another one and tries again, tries not to feel it burn against his stitches (he’s pretty sure they’re dissolving in his mouth, he tastes blood) and it sits in his stomach for a few minutes before his body decides he’s going to puke it up again. He mixes the next one, to his eternal shame, empties the powdered juice shit he found in the second pantry and three roughly measured shots and bit of water, swirls it around with a screwdriver he found in one of the toolboxes and downs the entire glass.

Good.

It goes to his head, the warm buzz comes on slow and thick, and Tony feels the bright daze of it flutter in his stomach and settle in the back of his skull. He mixes another, tips it back, feels the panic begin to subside, the _what if I fail_ and _I’m going to hell I’m going to hell I can’t –_  

This is his vice, he realizes when he stops being able to taste the alcohol. This is his place. This was always going to be how he went, he thinks, as he sits on his shitty little mattress in the dark, as his mouth bleeds and he lilts and fills his blood with poison.

He was born for this, he thinks, as he starts to slide. It won’t take much. 

 

\- - -

\- - -

\- - -

 

Carol is alone in the cafeteria when Steve’s feet finally carry him back.

She’s sitting there with half the lights on, her hair falling into her eyes. She’s writing something in a notebook, a carton of instant coffee and a handful of mugs strewn over the table on top of a map that’s hanging, half-shredded, off the edge of the metal table.

“Go to bed,” Steve says by way of greeting. He slides into the industrial kitchen like nothing is wrong. He hasn’t eaten, he realizes. He’s getting tired. His tissues are working overtime to repair the damage.

Carol looks up. “Did he talk to you?” She looks so earnest, like she’s dragged herself out of tears for this, and Steve wishes she didn’t have to be everyone’s rock. 

He turns his back before he answers. “He’s scared of me,” he says quietly.

“What?”

He putters around, because how is he supposed to explain . He’s not even mad anymore, he just feels wrung out and exhausted and vaguely like a coward, because he doesn’t know how to tell Carol and watch her face fall, he doesn’t know how to say that this is his fault and the only thing he can do to make it better is to hunt the bastard down and rip the flesh from his bones.

“Steve.”

He stares and stares at the counter until he feels Carol’s hand warm on his shoulder.

“Ok, just,” she says, and she’s right next to him, “he’s terrified of everyone, it’s not –“

“Tony is terrified of me,” Steve says unevenly, “because they used my face to torture him.”

She goes very still beside him, and Steve is going to avert another meltdown if it kills him.

“Take her,” he says, because he can’t have this conversation again, and he presses the puppy at her in a ball of fluff and tongue and ears. “You need her.” Even still, Carol looks like she’s on the verge of tears again, but she takes her, gingerly, cradles her to her chest, buries her face in the puppy’s ears. She's rewarded with a paw to the face and a few encouraging licks on the chin. 

Steve rifles through the carton of MRE’s someone’s opened. He sorts through plastic packets and tries to decide what Tony will be able to eat after 2 months on a liquid diet. “It’s not going to get better,” he says, drifting deeper into the kitchen, because this is what reality is now, because he’s cried as much as he’s going to. He grabs a Spaghetti Bolognese and some electrolyte packets and some bottled water. “I’m going to stay here a few days,” he murmurs, loading it all onto a plastic plate. “Study up, recharge. I’ll leave after that.”

“It’s not your fault,” she croaks.

Steve would like to disagree, and can’t.

“I’m what hurt most,” is all he says, and then there’s a silence they might have been able to fill, once upon a time.

“I’m going patrolling,” Carol says, all business and barriers, and when Steve looks to see, she’s rearranging her clothes into her costume and hiking the puppy up on one shoulder. “I’m sick of crying. You'd better fucking be here when I get back - ”

“Carol,” Steve says.

“What,” she says, and she doesn’t meet his eyes.

“Check up on him, ok, when I go,” Steve says roughly. “Help him. Tell Logan to shut the hell up.” He climbs over the galley door. “Tell him he means something to you.”

He is sorry, so very sorry this all landed on her shoulders. It would have been on his, if he’d been alive, if they hadn’t killed each other off, but he’s lived long enough that he knows how to take a hint from the universe, now.

He doesn’t care about saving the world anymore. 

“You can’t leave," Carol says quietly, when she's almost out the door. "Where the fuck are you gonna go, I need your help, you can’t –“

“Carol,” Steve says again, so very tired. 

“I don’t know what to do,” Carol says, and brushes past her anyway, because he’s already gone, he’s already back out in the cold and severing K’arr’n’s limbs one by one. “What am I supposed to fucking do?”

He’s already lost Tony.

He might have said _Avenge_ , once upon a time.

"Steve," she's yelling after him, but he's already gone.  

 

\- - -

 

He’s ready to leave as soon as his feet stop him in front of Tony’s closet, in front of the door that reads UTILITIES. He stares at his feet for a whole minute, shifting under the terrible flickering fluorescent lights.

He shouldn’t be here.

But he still hasn’t learned, he stands there expecting Tony to open the door with a wry smile and bright eyes, still expects him to say _Steve_ like they haven’t ripped each other to shreds with metal and bitterness. He shouldn’t be here, but Tony isn’t going to eat if no one brings him food, he’ll crawl into the dark and waste away. He’ll let himself rot.

“Tony,” he says, because he can’t be a surprise. He needs to give advance warning for his face.

Tony doesn’t open the door.

“I brought you food,” Steve murmurs to the door, as if Tony would listen and goodbyes are something they get. “I know you don’t,” he starts, but his breath catches in his throat. “I’ll leave it,” he says to himself, because Tony isn’t listening, Tony doesn’t want to hear anything he has to say.

This is for him, really. He’s selfish like that. He is a coward if he doesn’t offer him at least a goodbye.

(Who does he think he's fooling, Tony doesn't want a goodbye, Tony wants him  _gone -)_

He sets Tony's dinner, terribly quietly, in the middle of the doorway, so Tony can’t miss it when (if) he comes out of his cave. It could be anyone who’s left it.

He’s turning away when he hears glass breaking from inside.

His hand is on the doorknob before he can think not to, and it’s locked ( _of course it’s locked, it’s locked to keep you out, you fucking moron_ ), and he wants to be beyond breaking the door down, but then there’s a whimper and a thud and somehow his hand is crushing the cheap brass into slag.

“Oh, Tony,” he whispers.

The whole room smells like alcohol.

The _closet_ is tiny, and dark, and what space isn’t taken up by Tony’s mattress is taken up by shelving units crammed full of boxes that have never been open, industrial-sized white plastic bottles of god-knows-what well within arms’ distance. There’s glass all over the floor and a puddle of something vaguely honey-colored that smells a lot like tequila.

There is also a chair, kicked against the wall, with a bloody length of cotton resting on the seat.

Tony himself is slumped against the wall on a mattress that someone’s dragged in, a bottle of something clear tucked into the crook of his elbow, eyes closed, his filthy hair falling over his shadowed face. There is blood, all over his hand. The left shoulder of his shirt is wet where his head’s been resting.

With alcohol or tears, Steve isn’t sure.

 _Be grateful_ , he thinks, as his knees give out and he kneels on the mattress covered in shards of glass, grateful that he’s breathing, grateful that he hasn’t mixed up anything with his ridiculous knowledge of chemistry, _grateful_ that he’s not lucid enough to see you sobbing, Steve –

“God damn it,” Steve whispers, and he’s inches away from hysterics. “What did you do,” he says, as he can’t keep his hand steady to check Tony’s pulse and mentally runs through everything Tony would be able to find here, as he forces himself not to touch Tony’s face and tries to decide if he’d go for amphetamines or opiates. “Talk to me,” he says, not ever wanting to talk again, and Tony doesn’t move, he lies there in a washed-out mess, pale and sunken and beaten.

 _Walk away_ , some accursed part of him says, _walk away and let him die this time_ -

“Talk,” he says, “Tony, talk.”

Tony’s eyes flutter open and Steve just about has a heart attack.

“Sit up,” Steve says roughly, and he touches Tony’s skin like a traitor because Tony can’t do it by himself. “What did you take, how much have you had?” There are so many bottles, and some of them are full but two of them aren’t, and there are paper packets torn and dotted with powder on the mattress next to him –

Tony rolls his head like it’s too heavy for his shoulders. “Nuh,” he says, and he’s entirely trashed, his eyes are darting everywhere and his words are nonsense and he smells like liquor and blood.

“How much,” Steve insists in a broken voice that can’t be his. He takes the bottle away. 

“Fuh,” Tony says, “not done.” His eyes flutter shut again. He looks like wax.

“Jesus Christ,” Steve says, because Tony is falling over, and his skin feels about 5 degrees colder than the rest of the room, and this isn’t his fucking job, and he’s not a doctor and Stephen is gone and Tony is maybe dying again and there’s no _time_. “You’re done,” he says, and he reaches an arm behind Tony to sit him up and Tony moans. “Sit up,” he says. He hooks an arm under Tony’s armpits. His bandages are soaked through with blood.  

“No,” Tony says, dragging it out on his tongue, and curls up into a ball.

“Up,” Steve says.

“Nuh,” Tony says. “I gotta, I. I feel.” 

Steve pulls, and Tony moans, makes himself dead weight, or maybe he’s just half unconscious, and Steve is so tired of having to do this –

“Get up,” Steve says, and there are tears in his eyes. “Stand the fuck up, Tony.”

Tony doesn’t respond, so Steve does what he isn’t supposed to do and picks him up.

He’s cold, he’s shivering and his head lolls against Steve’s shoulder and Steve removes him with great efficiency from his fucking closet and out into the hallway. It’s so much worse, seeing him in the light, how his lips are slightly blue, how he doesn’t open his mouth, how his chest is barely rising and falling and he looks dead already under the lighting.

“No,” Tony breathes. “Pummedown.”

“Shut up, Tony,” Steve chokes out as he takes off down the hallway as fast as his legs will take them. “You’re a fucking idiot, you have to, I, _fuck_.”

He skids around the corners, he wonders who let him into the fucking alcohol supply, he thinks, with all his heart, _no_ , and opens the doors to Medical with his back. He jabs the intercom with a thumb, and it’s precious seconds lost, but he’s only one person, he’s only two hands, he’s only the worst fucking person in the world to do this –

“Carol, medical, now,” he all but shouts, and then he’s moving, because Tony is cold in his arms–

Powerless, all of his skill and his 40 pounds of solid muscle and there’s nothing he can do (Pull it the fuck together, soldier), all of him, and he’s a dumb kid getting the piss beaten out of him again, tears on his face and salt on his lips and all he can think is I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry–

He dumps Tony on his side in the shower with his head next to the drain and he’s darting back out the door when Tony stirs and moans and speaks.

“Get out,” Tony says, and then he rolls over and pukes his guts up.

Steve yanks cabinets open, looks for saline packets and vitamins and tubing for an IV and doesn’t find any of it, settles for grabbing a gallon of spring water out from under the sink and dragging himself back to the bathroom, back to Tony who he shouldn’t be near, Tony who’s collapsed in a puddle of his own vomit and _isn’t moving –_

“Aw, Tony,” Steve whispers, as he pries him up, as he turns the shower on to warm and bites his lip and curses at the ceiling and starts to peel Tony out of his useless fucking cotton clothes. He’s bad, he’s worse than he was when Steve carried him out of that burning fucking hotel, he’s freezing and his body can’t keep him warm and Steve has to fucking _do something –_

He’s pulling Tony’s pants off when Tony goes rigid where he’s lying in the water.

“No,” Tony slurs, “no, no, _no_ , just, don’t, no, don’t –”

Steve has to bury his face in his own sodden shoulder for a minute.

“You’re dying,” he chokes. “You’re going to die if I don’t do this.”

 _Push through it_ , he thinks, as he slides Tony’s legs out of his too-big jeans and Tony trembles, _you’re going to hell_ , he thinks, as he doesn’t let himself look at Tony’s body, as he watches some of Tony’s bandages be lost to the water and doesn’t think about how he’s doing everything wrong –

“Dontouchme,” Tony says in the barest of hysterical whispers, and Steve bites down on his hand and stares at the ceiling until he can stop crying enough to see straight.  

“Drink this,” he says, when he’s pulled himself together enough to speak, as he tries to prop Tony’s rigid fucking body up against the wall to tip the glass to Tony’s lips.

Tony turns his head away and then he pitches forward again and pukes.

Steve waits, forces himself not to touch, not to brush his sopping hair out of his eyes, not to rub his back, not to do anything but what he has to do to keep him alive. Tony lies there with his forehead pressed against the tile and Steve doesn’t help, should be helping, he sits there uselessly and stares at the mess of his back, at the red that’s been striped so violently across his skin –

“Tony,” Steve says, and Tony doesn’t get up. “ _Tony,_ ” he says, but Tony’s eyes are closed and the water is pooling under his chin –

“No,” Steve says, and pulls him into his lap, and he doesn’t fucking care. “Stay awake,” Steve says, as the water drips off his lips and onto Tony’s forehead, as Tony’s sick gets washed down the drain and he shivers in Steve’s arms.

He can count the seconds between Tony’s breaths, and then he realizes.

This is it, maybe.  

He rocks, and Tony’s skin is clammy, he whispers into Tony’s ears and Tony doesn’t open his eyes, he swears at the ceiling and holds Tony’s body up while he convulses and expels the shit he’s put in his body. “Don’t do this,” Steve says, “please don’t do this to me.” Tony’s skin is still blue. “Tony,” he says, and the lights buzz and no one’s footsteps are in the hallway, and Steve squints against the water running into his eyes. “I hate you,” he whispers to the terrible industrial army-green tile. “I hate that you did this, you never gave me a fucking chance, you.”

“'smy life,” Tony mumbles, like he’s never believed it. 

“There’s a reason I saved you,” Steve whispers, and there are tears rolling down his face.

The flow is enough to disguise the way he’s lost the ability to finish his sentences, how Tony’s burrowed into his heart and broken his words. It’s enough, even when he gasps down the urge to sob and he throws Tony’s jeans against the shower wall because this is all they _get_.

“Let me,” Tony says, and he’s begging.

This is all they were ever going to get, maybe.

“How am I supposed to do this,” Steve whispers into Tony’s disgusting hair, because he is precious, he’s so much more precious than he’d even imagined, he’s colder every minute and and they stood side by side once, when Steve used to think they’d be fine. Why, why did he never tell him anything he should have, why didn’t he tell him how important he was or how he would have died if it could’ve saved him from this or how he’d take it all for him a thousand fucking times if he could –

“I loved you,” Tony mumbles, and Steve can’t answer, because he’s weeping.

He can’t say anything, because he was never ready for this, he was never ready to watch Tony die like this, broken to pieces, he’s still not ready, not after everything they’ve been through and everything they’ve taken from him, it’s _wrong_ –

“I wish I’d never met you,” Tony slurs into his shoulder, and then Tony doesn’t say anything else. 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SO: 
> 
> Nohaijiachi made not one, but TWO fancomics, and I am utterly overwhelmed, go look at them [HERE](http://nohaijiachi.tumblr.com/post/45604709756/so-this-is-a-fancomic-for-sins-of) and [HERE](http://nohaijiachi.tumblr.com/post/46710679757/ops-i-did-it-again-sing-i-apologize-for-that). Cry. 
> 
> Here, have a [PLAYLIST](http://8tracks.com/kiyaar/sins). Cry.


	24. Precious

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is your reprieve. You're welcome. This was supposed to be half of a larger chapter, but then I decided to break it up because word counts. The UPSIDE - the next chapter will not take 3 months to get here.

 

 

_“Sesame, right?” Tony Stark says, and thrusts a stack of bagels into Steve’s chest._

_He chomps and thinks maybe he’s being plied. He’s here because Stark suggested it after a private Radioface concert and a private after-hours tour of the Air and Space Museum and another round of bar hopping. He’s mildly surprised that Stark even remembered, and_ _definitively still shocked that someone would spend so much money on him and still manage not to exhibit any signs of having a personal agenda by the end of the night._

_He most certainly doesn’t understand why Tony Stark is currently on his knees, in a suit that’s probably worth more than his back-pay, winding a tape measure around Steve’s thigh like he does this every damn day._

_He’s confused by how much it doesn’t bother him._

_“Stand still,” Tony Stark says, and frowns at the seam on Steve’s pants._

_“This is unnecessary,” Steve says quietly, “My old uniform is just fine.”_

_“Your old uniform is from 1943,” Stark says, “and is, frankly, in deplorable condition; it was never meant to stand up to 70 years of water exposure. I’m surprised you made it through the fight in one piece.”_

_Steve wants to say that he’s being ridiculous, that he’s been mending it himself for years and a little mileage isn’t going to make it any less durable, but Tony Stark is spending his morning taking his inseam measurements, winding the tape around over his crotch like some boutique attendant._

_He can’t help but feel a little humbled, because Stark’s hands are roaming and his face is lit up like a kid’s, manic and thrilled beyond belief, like Steve’s bigger than life and he’d crawl around on the floor all day if it’ll help keep the legend in one piece._

_Steve wishes people would stop feeling like they owed him things._

_“Do you do this for all the Avengers?” Steve asks, because he doesn’t know what else to say, because the lines of Stark’s hands are entirely too compelling and it feels immensely ungrateful to not make small talk._

_Stark snorts and tugs on the scale covering Steve’s chest. “Only for the ones I like,” he says evenly. His mouth twitches, like they’re sharing something, like Steve is more than a nobody and Tony Stark is maybe something approaching down-to-earth. Like maybe they could be friends if they tried hard enough._

_“I don’t want special treatment –”_

_“I’m arms and armor,” Stark says, curtly, unexpectedly. “I bankroll you guys. It’s the least I can do, ok?” He moves around behind Steve, his fingers skating against the back of Steve’s neck as he fiddles with the bridge between the cowl and the scale. “How’s that feel?” Stark murmurs._

_“Good,” Steve says. “Flexible.”_

_“Good,” Stark says, and he turns away a little too fast, like he’s almost ashamed._

_“What about him?” Stark turns back, impossibly handsome in his rumpled dress shirt, and Steve works his throat and nods inarticulately at the shine of Iron Man’s armor hanging in its own alcove, one of its arms disassembled on the workbench behind Stark. “You take care of him, too?”_

_Stark steps forward, like he can’t help himself, and Steve watches the swell of his throat as he snaps the last two clasps with great deliberacy and drags his eyes down to the star on Steve’s chest._

_“No,” Stark says with a thin little smile. “He looks after himself, mostly.”_

_\- - -_

 

Tony starts to seize.

Steve is inadequate. He thinks he watched his mother do this, once, his father collapsed on the bathroom tile smelling like cheap bourbon. He thinks he peeked around doorways. He remembers the rawness of the terror and the helplessness.

He remembers how very tired her face was. 

He’s beside himself. Tony shakes apart and his muscles jolt and Steve holds him to his chest. The water pelts down and he shakes it out of his eyes and his too-long hair slicks over his forehead and sticks in his eyelashes as he does the things he’s not supposed to do.

He can’t help it. Can’t bring himself to take his hands back. He clutches, like if he tries hard enough he’ll keep the warmth from leaving Tony’s skin, like if he presses hard enough, splays his traitorous hand out over his heart, he’ll force the life back into him. He traces his shaking fingers over the indents where his skin has been burned away, cups his palm over the curve of his ribcage. Feels the breath slowing in his lungs. Feels his heartbeat stutter.

Feels his own chest grow cold.

Tony is still in all the ways that matter. Except he’s not, he’s still seizing, and Steve chokes out a sob and he doesn’t know, he doesn’t know anything useful, doesn’t know how to fix him and doesn’t know if he can be fixed and what if it’s cruel, what if he’s the cruelest of all, saving him, dragging him back to life when he’d given it up long ago, what if death is kinder, what if –

He feels like he’s fainting, he thinks dimly, feels it welling up in him, wants to claw his own skin off and shout until his screams echo off the fucking tile walls. He gasps, tangles his fingers in Tony’s hair, pulls him in tighter, presses his lips to Tony’s temple. “Sorry,” he whispers, and it comes out as a broken hiss. “I’m sorry, you didn’t deserve this, I’m so sorry.”

He pretends it’s his to hold, Tony’s skin under his lips, the bulge of his stomach because he’s starving, the pucker of nylon stiches laid through his skin and the slick of half-healed weeping burns where he’s been savaged, the body he shouldn’t be touching but is.

“I’m sorry I yelled at you,” Steve whispers, because he wants to say it, because when was the last time someone told him he mattered, when was the last time someone said I love you or hugged him or told him he was precious, when was the last time someone loved him as much as he deserved to be loved. (Was it Rumiko, last, who tangled her fingers in his hair and whispered it into his ear?)

“I’ll stay with you,” he sobs. “I’m not leaving.” This is all he can do now, this is all he can give. Tony needs to feel something other than cruelty. He shouldn’t be alone. Someone should hold him. He rocks, Tony’s skin on his, Tony’s head falling back to rest on his shoulder, like it will offset the enormity of the loss, because this is all he can give him and Tony deserved the world, he deserved so much better than desertion and animosity, deserved the chance that no one gave him (they would have given Steve). Tony, with his shit-eating smile and his clever brain and his hopelessly brave heart, Tony who they’ve ripped apart because he trusted again, because he trusted Steve, because he bared his heart and loved.

Steve doesn’t deserve to hold him, but he does, he smoothes his hair away from his forehead like he never got the chance to do while Tony was Tony, while he was proud and happy and strong and full of life, and the tears run over his cheeks faster than he can stop them. Because this was meant for him, maybe, because they could have had something, both of them, Tony-and-Steve, Tony could have had help, he could have. There were signs, thousands of things he missed in their life that was, thousands of things he mistook and ignored and ignored, and what is he supposed to _do_ –

“Let go,” someone is saying.

He clings, because he lets go and Tony is gone, he lets go and Tony is a body, Tony was everything and he didn’t even know, how are they going to bury him, the ground is frozen and he can’t go into one of the ditches, he can’t, he _deserves better_ –

“Let go,” says the voice, again. There are hands, furred and blue, pulling Tony away from him. Tony’s hand drags through the water pooling on the floor.

The water turns pink where they’ve been.

His hands have nothing to hold. He sits, he holds them there, in his lap, shaking and calloused and enormous. He looks at his palms.

He thinks he’s done a lot wrong. 

He thinks maybe he’s done everything wrong.

“I came as soon as I could,” Hank McCoy is saying, after a while. “Carol’s out. You’re lucky I heard your call.”

Steve wants to ask what about this is lucky.

“Has he taken his painkillers today?” Hank kneels in front of him, ruffled and rapidly becoming sodden, holding some piece of paper up in a blue hand, like it’s important, like Steve can read words right now.

“Painkillers,” Steve echoes, distant. “What? Painkillers?” he says again, because Tony wasn't on painkillers, to his knowledge, and Hank is holding up a note with  _vicodin_ and  _as needed_ and _Stephen_ , he left a note before he left, before he left Tony alone and no one thought to even look for it. There’s something wrong with Steve's voice, there’s something wrong with his body, maybe, he feels faint, that’s not right, he doesn’t get this way –

“Stephen left instructions, all right, I need to know if he took his vicodin – ok, steady,” he’s saying. Steve wants to say that if he could be steady, he would be, that once upon a time, under the disciplines of war, under the blaze of shells and the certainty of death, standing side by side with good men, he could, he could snap his heels together and salute and pull himself together under fire. That was it, that was his world once, and then he’s pitching forward, he’s gasping and his mouth is saying things, _Jesus Christ_ and _Tony_ and _I didn’t, help him, I couldn’t,_ god. That was his world, Steve Rogers, steady and certain (unmoored and adrift) until Tony sauntered into his life and made him need him and Steve didn’t even _notice._ How can he, he wants to say, how can he be steady when half of him is leaving, _how_ –

“I know you’re upset,” Hank is saying, and the world is dim, “I need to know what he took, can you tell me that? It might save his life, can you tell me how much he had –”

It might save his life (Tony’s life in his hands, again) and he doesn’t know, he doesn’t know what Tony took, how much he had, he’s useless in all the ways that count for something, Carol would know what to do (has Carol been here?), Carol would and he doesn’t and–

“I don’t _know_ ,” and his voice is breaking around the words, “I don’t know, too much, I don’t –”

“Ok,” Hank says. “Ok.”

“It’s not ok,” Steve is sobbing, “it’s not ok, he’s not ok, you’re not, he’s dying, _do something_ –”

“Calm down,” Hank is saying, and he’s kneeling before him, so very worried, wasting time–

“No,” Steve says, because Hank doesn’t understand, why do none of them understand how important he is? “Not me, go, him –”

“I’m doing everything I can, all right? We have to wait, he’s on – ok, _breathe_ , Steve –”

Steve is only vaguely aware that Hank is helping pull him to his feet, and then he staggers, because he doesn’t know how to do this anymore, doesn’t know how Carol’s been doing it for months on her own, doesn’t know how he ever knew how to put this aside once upon a time when the job required him to do so (never wants to do the job again, never wants to see the flag ever again –)

“Jesus,” Steve gasps, and he swipes desperately at his face, and he’s losing it, he’s losing his goddamn mind –

“Ok,” Hank says, steering him out, like he won’t see Tony lying there looking dead, like he won’t see the tubes taped to his face or the monitor that says his heart isn’t beating like it should be. “When’s the last time you slept?”

“I don’t,” Steve gasps, because Tony is lying there, still as death, because it’s not fucking fair. “I don’t know, it doesn’t matter,  _I don't need sleep_ _–_ ”

“You really do,” Hank says. He sounds worried, like Steve might not be entirely sound. He presses something into Steve's hand, pills. Half a bottle of something. “This’ll blow through your system in about 30 minutes, but it’ll knock you out, at least –”

 “I'm not," Steve says hysterically, " _no,_  I'm not fucking leaving, I –"

"He may not live through the night," Hank says.

Steve realizes he's dropping pills all over the floor, because he knows, he knows and he knew and it's something else entirely to hear it out of someone else's mouth, and he can't see through the tears in his eyes, and he's knocking something over, and he can't do that, he'll scare Tony again, Tony shouldn't be scared anymore –

“It will be hours,” Hank says softly, and then he's there, he's blue arms around Steve's waist because Steve is lilting. “He needs this all flushed out of his system. It’s not – I won’t leave his side. He’s in good hands.”

“Be,” Steve gasps, "be kind to him, be.  _Please_.”

Hank looks at him with something that looks a lot like pity. 

 

\- - -

 

His feet carry him, because he is a soldier, and he’s long forgotten how to succumb.

The lights bump on, behind him, one by one, as he drags himself through the hallway. He wonders idly if it’s night, there’s nothing to go by in here. (Is that what it must have been for Tony, the glare of xenon for hours, days stretching into each other, sleepless terror punctuated by beatings and violation–)

He floods the closet with light. He stumbles, slices his hand all to fuck on the broken tequila bottle. He doesn’t stop, not when he loses his vision again when he sees bloody fingerprints on a half-full bottle of Tylenol that probably didn’t do anything to cut the pain, not when he rips the sheets from the mattress and sees the blood stains that have soaked through them.

This might all be for nothing, he thinks, as he throws it all violently into the bucket he’s dragged out from under the shelving unit. The room is dismal, still, and there are too many things, too many things that Tony could make use of with his clever brain, chemicals and tools and sharp things. But he has to, he’s not going to force Tony to live in a real room, if he’s going to live here he’ll _live_ , he’ll have clean sheets and books and things to tinker with, he’ll –

He sees it again, the ripped sheets curled into a loose coil on the chair, and he realizes it’s a rope.

It’s nothing to close his hands around the wood, to bring his full weight to bear and smash the chair against the corner of one of the shelving units. He moves like a man possessed, one, two, three strikes and it fractures into something unrecognizable and falls to pieces in his hands.

It does absolutely nothing to satisfy.

He rages, he plants his hands under the supports and pulls the bolts on one of the shelving units out of the wall, watches the particle board warp and fracture with a brittle crack. He rips things off the shelves that remain, bits of PVC and gallons of paint, boxes of lightbulbs and coffee cans filled with nails, heaves them into the corner where they sound off the metal walls, kicks them until they rupture and there’s sage-green paint splattered all over the floor –

He’s sinking, then, blind. He’s destroying again, he’s ruining when he should be helping, he should be emptying the liters and liters of industrial bleach and scouring agents, but he’s sinking onto the bare mattress because suddenly his legs won’t hold him, empty arms and wet clothes and Tony is lying in medical getting his stomach pumped because he _tried to blot his own life out_ –

He gets it now, he thinks, and a laugh rises in his throat, bitter and insuppressible, before it’s lost to the sobs that tear through him and leave him clutching at Tony’s pillow still glittering with shards of amber glass. He gets it, how fast people can leave. How little time it takes to steal away your chances, to stop you from saying the things that need to be said.

He understands how very cruel fate is.

He wonders, as he curls into a miserable ball in the dark, if Tony sobbed like this, if there was anyone to comfort him and take his bottles away when Steve was cold and stiff and shot full of lead.

He is terrified, he’s bone-weary and petrified of falling asleep, of waking up in a world without Tony, in a world where he’s ignored everything that’s ever mattered and Tony is remembered as a ghost of what he was, where he did the best he could and it wasn’t enough, where Steve failed he failed he failed–

His chest aches, and he curls into himself in his filthy shirt, the light spilling in from the hallway, the buzz of machines thick in his ears, his filthy cheek pressed against the mattress.

Please, he prays, alone in the dark. 

 

\- - -

 

Maria’s hidden away, too, when he finds her, crawled into her own dark corner with nothing but maps and a dying bulb for company. She startles, when he comes in, and she might have pointed a gun at him instead, once upon a time. For now, though, she just shrugs, tightens, coils herself like she might have to fight as he slides into the chair across from her. 

“Debrief me,” Steve says hoarsely.

“Okay,” she says carefully. As if he’ll snap. As if he’ll do it with his fingers around her neck. She doesn’t trust him.

Isn’t that novel.

“I want everything you have,” Steve says, and his throat feels like it’s been grated raw. “All your notes on the fuck you thought was me.”

“And what,” she says, tapping her pen very deliberately on her pad, “are you planning to do with them?”

He thinks about it. He thinks about the dull green-grey smear of the sky and Tony crawling away on his knees by the Hudson and K’arr’n twisting a knife into his chest.

He wants to say a lot of things.

“I’m going to work up a profile,” Steve says, “and then I’m going to find him and flay him alive.”

She considers him, in his sweatpants and his bare feet and his red-rimmed eyes. He wonders, vaguely, if he smells like alcohol. If he smells like vomit. Wonders if he’s picked up Tony’s death-pall. She moves, slowly, like she’s tired, like she’ll provoke him if she breaks eye contact, like he’s a volatile thing to be defended against. He expects her to say no, you don’t need a profile, it’s a simple job, _you’re too close, soldier_ –

Maria reaches under the desk and comes up with a mass of cables and something that looks like a jury-rigged hard drive encasement.

“You can access it from any of the media rooms down corridor F,” she says carefully. “Everything should be tagged. Last 6 months, including security footage. It’s all there.”

Steve runs his fingers over a coil of black cabling. “What is this?”

“The Helicarrier server backups.”

Steve stares. “You saved them?”

Maria’s mouth quirks up in a bitter smile. “Someone had to.”

“This is –”

“Not enough,” she says dully. “I wanted the replay for the attack, I got a lot more. Thousands of hours of –” She stops. “There’s security footage on there,” she murmurs.

“Did you watch it,” he asks in a faltering rasp that can’t be his. 

“I watched some of it,” she says. “There’s too much to go through, but back at the beginning, we thought –” She drops her head in inarticulate defeat. “We _thought_ that we’d be able to find something. A weakness. Something to exploit.”

“You didn’t,” Steve says, and it’s barely a question.

Maria looks like she’s trying to glare and doesn’t have the energy for it. “They owned us from the beginning,” she says, the grim twist of a smile warping her face in the barest of blue light. “We were shit outta luck the minute Stark’s tech went down.”

Steve doesn’t say anything, and she presses on.

“You know what the shitty thing is,” she says. “It would have been easy, if we’d just known who they were. Which ones to put down.” She sighs. “It doesn’t matter now. They ran us out of the city. That was all they needed to do, really. Makes all your goddamn super signatures easier to pinpoint.” She clicks her pen open and closed.

“There have to be others,” Steve says hoarsely. “We’re more resilient than that.”

“Wouldn’t know,” Maria says acidly. “We’re cowering, see.”

Steve closes his eyes, because he’s so very low for saying that.

“I want to look through the footage. I want to –“

_Ask me, Steve. I’m sure you want to know –_

“I need to see what happened,” Steve forces out. “I need to know how he works.”

“Need,” Maria says to her hands, “you need to?” She sighs and rubs something out of the corner of her eye. “He worked like you.”

“That’s,” he starts. “Evident.” His voice warbles on the end of it, and Maria scrutinizes him like she can’t decide whether to hate him or reach for her gun. 

“You look like hell,” she says. “Are you ok?”

It’s such a simple question. There is a scripted response to the question. It’s a simple interaction. People have it all the time.

(No one had it with Tony.)

The arm of the chair cracks where Steve’s been gripping it, and Maria’s face goes tight and pale before everything goes blurry, before he’s crushing the fucking chair into splinters and powder, before he’s sliding out of it and onto his knees in front of the desk.

“I don’t know how to do this,” is all that comes out of his mouth. 

“Jesus Christ,” she says. She sounds far away, and he wonders, vaguely, if he’s cracking up, if this is how Bob felt, if –

There’s a hand, small and warm, on his back. Tentative. She fears for her safety, maybe. She doesn’t want a repeat. He can’t even be angry, he wants the comfort and it’s his own fault he can’t have it, he’s been snarling at them when they’re only human, he’s been blaming them all when he should be blaming himself, too –

“I screwed up,” he gasps. “I screwed everything up.”

“Ok, you have _got_ to calm down,” she says. “You gotta, Rogers, look at me –”

“You all think I’m a hero,” he gets out. “ _They idolize you, Steve_ , that’s what he _said_ , you think I’m _infallible_ –”

“I think I missed a step,” Maria says. 

“No one stopped me, no one ever stops me, they –” He chokes out a laugh that ends up being a sob. “I told him he was insane, I told him he was losing his mind, I told him – that’s all he’s going to _remember_ , I was – _cruel_ and no one stopped me –”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake –”

“I beat him down and he couldn’t even – _tell me_ ,” Steve cries. “I didn’t.” He buries his face in his hands. “He begged me to stop,” he whispers.

“Do you want me to get someone,” Maria asks.

“I want you to _listen_ ,” Steve says miserably, because she’s missing it, everyone’s missing the fucking point. “You think he _deserved this_ ,” he gasps, his voice broken and hoarse, “You think I’m better than him because I’m _Captain America_ and I wear a fucking flag, you think I have a solution to your _clusterfuck_ –”

“You need to calm down,” Maria says, “ok, you need to –”

“I’m just some _asshole,”_ he gasps, “I didn’t _listen,_ I tore him apart.” He looks up, and he can feel his nose running, can feel his eyes puffed and red and bloodshot. “Nobody questioned me,” he says faintly.

“The war is done, Steve,” she says, and maybe he’s imagining it, but her voice sounds gravelly. “It’s not our planet anymore, it doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to him,” Steve whispers. “It’s the last thing I ever said to him, before.”

Before K’arr’n used everything he’d ever ignored to beat Tony into the ground.

“Ask me things,” he decides, breathless and sore and sick of crying. “You wanted the intel.”

“No,” Maria says sharply, sitting back on her heels with a sigh. “We’re not doing this right now, Rogers, you’re a fucking mess –”

“We are,” Steve says roughly, “Ask me things. I need the distraction. I need to...”

“You need to stop,” Maria says sadly.

“This is all there is,” Steve says fiercely. “Do you understand? This is the only thing I know how to do.  This all I can do _._ ” He looks up at Maria’s tired face, to her hand gripping his shoulder and the faith in her eyes that’s starting to waver. “I’m going to kill him,” Steve says raggedly. “So _debrief me_.”

“Ok,” Maria says. “Ok.”

 

\- - -

 

He’s disproportionately grateful that Maria gives him this.

She presses the mass of it into his hands, and he wanders off into the bowels of the compound. She doesn’t say anything as he leaves, doesn’t look him in the eyes or tell him he’s being indulgent.

She doesn’t need to. He knows this isn’t going to help Tony.

He fumbles with the cords in one of the media rooms, and the root directory springs up on the monitor he’s dragged down from the ceiling. There are hours and hours, everything from the past 6 months, everything he missed, some things he didn’t. Nothing, after January 27th. It’s all tagged. Stark, Tony. Rogers, Steve. Engineering Logs. Medical. Press releases. January Invasion. Skrulls. He queues up everything tagged with his name after November.

He feels like it should be harder than that, but it’s right there, nice and clean with a fully functional file index. He does his best to pretend he’s being professional, that this is a task that no one else can do. He centers himself, looks at his lap and taps his feet on the supports of his swivel chair as the colors come up, as the Helicarrier hallways unfold in high definition greys and silvers.

(As if anything about this is clean.)

He leans in a little as he watches himself brought back from Latveria in chains.

It’s him, it’s his inflection and bearing and bitterness. It’s all him, the way his words cut and slice as Maria debriefs him, the way he’s surly and taciturn as the medics fawn over his not-self. He drags himself away, brings up captioning and sets it to play at 30 times the speed, hunches over the monitor with his finger on the arrow key.

Intel, he tells himself. Research. Profiling.

(It’s simple, really, he decides. He’s selfish.)

He wants to know. He wants to know, why his face, why Tony. He wants to know why he can’t look away, why he can’t stop watching as Tony stumbles down to detention, drunk and hurting and so very hopeful, when his own mouth shouts  _there is no us_  and Tony flees at the cruelty that  _could have been his_. It’s wrong, it’s wrong and revenge and morbid fascination and the certainty that he is indulging the part of himself he should be pushing down. It’s that Tony was right, and he needs to know. He’s not ready, when he watches himself dip his head down to kiss Tony fiercely, when Tony kisses back and they drift back into Tony’s enormous bed.

( _Turn it off, turn it off, turn it_ off –)

He doesn’t turn it off.

He watches, sits there like a  _traitor_  and watches, as clothes fall away and Tony reaches for a body that isn’t Steve. He holds his breath as K’arr’n drapes himself over Tony, and Tony moans ( _moans_ ) Steve’s name.

 (How long had Tony wanted that, how did K’arr’n know when Steve missed it, how is he supposed to pretend he doesn’t want it, Tony laid out and flushing for him, reaching his arms out and arching his back –)

He sits, he watches himself (K’arr’n, it’s K’arr’n) go to meetings, watches his body talk to Maria and dress in black leather, watches himself announce amnesties with a smile he’s disgusted to see he can’t distinguish from his own. Watches himself preen in his quarters and then waltz down to the surveillance suite and fuck Jessica Drew up against the servers. Watches, as he finds Tony again, as he whispers in Tony’s ear and snakes a hand down to palm him through his pants, as they part ways when they’re done and K’arr’n ignores him and Tony puts up with it.

(This isn’t for him, none of this is fair, he shouldn’t be watching –)

 _Hurt me,_  Tony says one night, like it’s all he’s ever wanted.

No, Steve thinks, and his other self smiles and pulls Tony into his lap and obliges him.

Steve wrenches the doors to the liquor cabinet open.

He’s being selfish, he thinks, as the video plays in the background, as he looks at the bottles like it matters what kind of alcohol he’s drinking and pretends this is a lapse, that he’s better than this, that this isn’t what he’s going to do, as he unscrews the top and throws it into the far corner of the room. He downs it like it’s water, ignores the awful choke of it as it goes down, knows he has to move fast to overwhelm his metabolism. Feels it hit him, warm and welcome, and wonders if he shouldn’t have let Tony die.

They have sex, everywhere, Tony and not-him. The files queue up and stutter like Tony tried to overwrite them and didn’t manage it, and Steve looks at his lap and sloshes his bottle around when he wants to be looking at Tony with his legs curled around his waist, Tony’s fingers clawing at his back,  _Tony,_ living out his second chance that was always a death sentence - 

(It could have been him, it could have been  _them_ , it could have been whispering filthy things in each other’s ears and fixing their clothes in closets and Tony smirking at him across a conference table, it’s  _never going to be them_  –)

They remake the world. Tony, tugging his sleeves over his wrists and wearing dark glasses to hide the circles under his eyes, Tony favoring one side or the other, smiling like nothing is wrong, like he’s every inch the asshole everyone wants him to be, K’arr’n’s hand on the small of his back the whole time. K’arr’n, proud and deliberate and careful as the public cheers and Tony fades into silence beside him, shaking the President’s hand and smiling for the cameras. Shining and gold in every way that counts for everyone to see, except when he’s wrapping his hands around Tony’s wrists in the dark of the night.

Tony does his job sometimes, not often, not well, but he pretends. He drifts from meeting to meeting, limps back to his quarters at the end of the day. He sits, for hours at a time, like he’s forgotten how to move. His armor sits, most days, in a pile in the corner. K’arr’n lies, perfectly, bashful and self-deprecating when he needs to be, steady and unassailable as he sighs like it  _pains_ him to be arresting the people he’s arresting. K’arr’n, using Steve’s retinas to get into storage, K’arr’n, keeping his traitorous blond head as he plays around in S.H.I.E.L.D’s medical records, as he calls in orders for sentinel patrols and uploads things into the Helicarrier’s mainframe night after night from Tony’s console.

Tony, Tony sits alone and drinks himself to sleep in the living room every night K’arr’n doesn’t come home to hurt him.

Steve wonders what Tony’s lips taste like and fumbles with more alcohol.

Bucky’s baritone curls out of one of the speakers, and Steve smiles for the 5 seconds it takes K’arr’n to duck his head and laugh in all the right places and pull Bucky in for a hug and bring a laser pistol to his head and  _fire_.

Steve’s mouth is open, he feels his face contorted into something embarrassing and disarmed and awful.  Bucky’s corpse hits the deck in some fucking storage bay, and he watches as K’arr’n lays down burns over his chest and scores them deep into his stomach, watches Jessica Drew meet him for the body and dive out of the airlock with it.

He drinks, like he’s not a filthy fucking hypocrite.

It doesn’t do anything to help, and he’s shaking, still, as he watches himself leave like  _nothing even happened_ , as the days pass and K’arr’n blames Tony for his lies, as he faults Tony for all the things Tony’s ever been ashamed of, as he tells him  _you’re useless when you’re drinking_  and  _it’s not like Sentinels are any different from what you used to build_ and  _I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that, Tony, I’m sorry –_

He watches, as Tony wipes his tears away and plasters a dead smile on his face, as he crawls back and begs forgiveness he shouldn’t need to ask for, as he softens his bruised body into something lithe and supple and and sucks his not-self off like maybe he’s just not trying hard enough. He watches, as Tony’s eyes grow duller, as the bruises get darker and he sleeps and sleeps, as K’arr’n climbs into his bed and Tony takes it, takes everything even when it leaves him limping, takes the blows without protest, starts to kneel and beg for kindness that no one is ever going to show him. Tony does it, does everything K’arr’n tells him to, endures and squeezes his eyes shut and still, every fucking time, screams (moans, cries) Steve’s name like he doesn’t deserve to have it on his tongue. Curls his body around K’arr’n’s, like it’s all he has in the world.

Tony doesn’t leave, he just apologizes and begs and cries and always, always sinks to his knees in the end and yields. 

There’s nothing he was going to learn, Steve thinks, stunned into silence, lilting as the playback flies by. There’s no other layer. There is K’arr’n and there is Tony and there’s no one who gives a damn.

He slides the glass against his bottom lip, wonders if this is a violation, watching Tony at his barest, watching Tony beg. Watching his body answer with cruelty.

Tony fades onscreen and Steve watches what he was left to, thinks he's fading right now, that if he dies, his last memories will be of crushing loneliness and cruelty and shame, and -

Steve lets himself cry, because there are more bottles in the cabinet and the door is locked.

 

\- - -

 

Steve doesn’t know what he’s watching anymore. He thinks he fucked up the queue. It's just senseless brutality, now, sped up 32x. It's just Tony, _giving_. He thinks he crushed part of the keyboard into something unusable. He thinks they maybe couldn’t afford to lose the hardware. 

He wonders, idly, if his body can succumb to alcohol poisoning.

Someone is touching his shoulders, saying _god damn it_ and _please be ok_ and _I can’t fucking believe you –_

It’s Carol. She smells clean, and it can’t be him, he hasn’t showered for days. He smells like Tony.

“I thought you were studying,” she’s whispering. He can’t tell if she’s actually hysterical or if it’s just him coming apart at the seams. Projecting. “Steve, it’s – _Thursday_ , you’ve been in here for days –”

“I’m sorry,” he says. He might be slurring. He thinks he’s drunk. He feels nauseous.

She’s picking up bottles. She must think he’s terrible. That’s about right, he is terrible.

“You’re drinking,” she whispers. Steve doesn’t have a good answer, braces himself on his forearms, and the world tilts. He stares at the grain of the wood. He wants to say that he’s ok, he’s fine, she doesn’t have to worry, but she’s crying again, he made her cry again –

“I’m sorry,” he says again, “I can’t go see him, I have to do this instead –”

Carol punches him in the jaw.

“What were you _thinking_ ,” she says, like she wants to be yelling and can’t manage anything but desperate choking. “I go out and I come back and Tony is in a fucking coma and this is your _response?_ ” She throws one of his bottles at the wall. “I need you to _step the fuck up_ ,” she says. “Because we’re going to LOSE, Steve. We’re _losing_ , and you’re fucking –” She runs her hands through her hair. “Drunk,” she whispers helplessly, “you’re drunk, I didn’t think you could _get_ drunk, _Steve._ ” 

“He said he loved me,” Steve says, because he doesn’t know how else to explain.

Carol looks at him like she’s torn between furious and miserable.

She makes a noise he doesn’t know how to identify, like she’s swallowing her rage, and then she’s leaving, striding out the doors again. It’s just him and Tony on the screen, Tony looking at his lap and talking about King Arthur. He’s terrible, he’s hurting everyone he should be helping, he’s falling forward because the wood feels so cool and his stomach feels terrible and Tony is in a _coma_ and Carol is pushing an enormous plastic pitcher of water at him –

“Are you ok?” she asks, wiping her tears away, and she’s better than he is, he’d have left –

“I’m sorry,” Steve says again. “Yeah, I’m. I might. Carol, I’m.”

“Stop apologizing,” she says irritably, gathering all of his bottles to her chest to get them off the desk. “Water.” She drags a chair out from the stack in the corner. “I’m sorry I hit you,” she mutters. “That was crass.” She drags the mess of the server backups across the table.

He sips out of the side, leaves it on the table because he’d spill it everywhere if he tried to pick it up. Feels it settle, uneasy in his stomach, and tries not to move too much.

 _I do what you do,_ Tony says onscreen. _I committed._

“Why are you watching this,” she says, so very tired and sad. She’s looking at the keyboard and frowns at the place where Steve’s ground it into a pulp. She picks the assembly up, turns it over, goes to work on one of the SCSI cords –

“Don’t,” Steve says, because this is important. He has to watch. Why don’t they get it, he has to watch –

“Don’t tell me what to do,” she says evenly, and abandons finesse in favor of ripping the cords out. “This is bullshit, and you know it.”

“Someone needs to watch,” Steve says roughly. “Someone needed to do it.”

“No, no one _needed_ to see it,” she says. “That’s not –” She catches the pitcher as Steve almost knocks it off the desk. “He would have hated that, Steve, if it was me, I’d hate it, that was – really shitty of you.”

Steve thinks about that, and all signs point to selfish.

“He was trying to fix it,” he mumbles. “He didn't know, he, might've known it wasn’t me, if I hadn’t been terrible, if.”

“Jesus, it’s not your fault,” she says. “"I know, pot, kettle, whatever, but - you need to forgive yourself."

“What do you want,” he growls, because he’s not ready to do that, because Tony is dying for shit he was too dense to notice. 

Carol sits there like she’s been slapped, and Steve wishes he were something better than useless and mean. 

“I want my friends back,” Carol whispers miserably. “I want you to stop fucking – _punishing_ yourself. The world’s got it covered.”

This isn’t living, Steve thinks, dimly, and then somehow he’s mashing his face into Carol's shoulder and weeping.

 

\- - -

 

Carol carries him down the hallways to living quarters.

She dumps him in a free room. She’s silent as she gets his boots off and wrenches the sheets down and stuffs his legs in. She fills up his pitcher again and leaves it on the table and adds a few electrolyte packets. She watches as he takes half a bottle of Benadryl to knock himself out, knowing it’s only going to make it worse when he finally wakes up. It feels wasteful. He manages to throw up it all up anyway in the plastic bucket she shoves next to his bed before she decides he’s ok and leaves him alone with a walkie tossed on the table.

He doesn’t really deserve any of it.

He thinks about Tony, lying somewhere with saline dripping into his stomach. He tries not to feel it, the low curl of want in his belly, thinks about going down to medical and falling asleep with his head on Tony’s bedside –

He rolls over and mashes his face into the pillow and thinks that he probably lost the privilege the minute he pressed an electron-scrambler into Tony’s gauntleted hand.

 

\- - -

 

He goes back to the media room he’s trashed, when he can stand again, after he’s eaten his weight in MRE’s and canned fruit under the stares of everyone he doesn’t ever want to speak to again.

He unstoppers the bottles, everything that's left in the liquor cabinet, squats in his boots in the showers and holds them, one by one, over the steel drain.

“That’s dumb,” Maria says, squatting behind him. “What are you gonna do when the betadine runs out?”

Steve doesn’t tell her he isn’t planning to live that long.

 

\- - -

 

He’s already running down the dunes when the floodlights come up.

It’s a small base, as bases go. Hastily erected, pre-fab construction. They probably found it in a warehouse somewhere. It sits on a pier that looks like it’s from another lifetime (Steve’s lifetime), when this was a quiet town, when it was humans and mutants and _people_ walking around instead of Skrulls in jackboots and leather with plasma weapons. It’s entirely nondescript; a grey building that looks like it could be a power station with a flimsy platform that winds around the base and juts out into the lake a little. It maybe floats when it’s not half-frozen like it is now. It would take 5 minutes to level with a rocket launcher.

That’s not what this is, though.

He could have done this the better way. He’d knelt for a while, in the cover of dead trees and fallen brush with a scope in his pocket and the shield strapped to his back, scheming and planning and watching them patrol and call to each other with guttural clicks he doesn’t understand. Nine miles around the goddamn frozen lake, miles away from any sizable city and still they’re throwing off an energy signature that was ridiculously easy to follow with a cannibalized sensor and Carol’s vague directions.

They didn’t deserve a stealth approach.

He’s drawing their fire. They’re already shouting, but they don’t know who he is, he’s in tired black clothes like any other miserable fool trying to get by now. He leans back as he flies over the summit of the smallish hill, lets his boots slide on the thin layer of ice that’s just beneath the snow. His shield is already back in his hand when he levels out and hits the beach, allows himself the briefest moment to watch their faces warp into shock and pain as the two he’s decapitated go silently down in an overflow of blood that looks black without a full moon.

This, this is him being reckless, and he _doesn’t care_.

He bounds across the beach and lays himself down into a runner’s base-slide, lets his feet fall out from under him and _glides_ , rips three pairs of legs apart and listens to them wail as they fall on useless stumps as he moves past. They’re already down and bleeding out as he springs into a leap and tumbles up the platform that floats just over the ice-sheet at the edge of the beach.  

They yell, and he deflects some of their fire, unconcerned, the welcome weight of their beams singing off the star of his shield. He can’t help it, can’t help but think if he’d let himself have this, if he’d spent less time brooding and snapping at Sharon and more time _paying attention_ and being a soldier instead of a titan _–_

He’s let himself forget that he was a weapon before he was ever a hero.

He’s outnumbered, maybe, he thinks, as he hears something that sounds a lot like an electronic Gatling gun powering up on the second level. There’s a strip of pink skin where he had stiches 48 hours ago, under his thermals. There are holes that have just barely closed in his stomach and his lung.

_Reckless._

He’s been outnumbered a lot, and this is an exercise, and his worst is better than most people’s peak. It’s a dance he knows, every fiber of his body has been engineered for this. There’s no use sitting when he can do this, when every cant of his arms and fall of his feet is a Skrull that he should have been around to kill in the first place, when there’s more lethality in the coil of his arms than he knows what to do with.

(He owes this to Tony, owes it to himself, and is there even a _difference_ now, was there ever –)

Two more of them step forward to meet him, and it’s nothing to bring his arm down in a wide swipe that slices their plasma rifles in half, the milky blue of them spilling out all over the snow. He lets himself have the moment to take in the shock smeared over their green faces as he ducks between them, as his arm moves in a graceful arc up through their torsos and he closes his lips to the spray of blood that falls warm on his face.

He’s killed seven, maybe one more on the roof with reflected fire. There can’t be more than twelve. He’s almost done, he’s almost furious that it’s easy like this. Extinguishing their lives isn’t enough, almost, isn’t now, wasn’t at the tower. There’s maybe nothing to stay him, he thinks, he’s maybe used himself up, because he’s coiled and itching and none of these monsters are the one he wants to be hurting –

It makes him furious. He wrenches the door off its slides, ducks inside to an interior of railings and platforms and monitors. A turret fires and gouges a hole in the metal floor, almost takes his damn foot off. He’s already gone, though, curling into a ball and tumbling to the right before he even consciously think to tuck and roll. His world narrows to the lit span of the wall and the bodies running down the stairs to meet him, to the freezing air and the hiss of machinery and the slosh-gurgle of gallons of water being dredged up just on the other side of the building. The cold sharpens him, and he brings his arm around to bear on the nearest of his prey as the drone of the alarm sounds in his ears and he’s reaching his arms out to snap its filthy green neck as something hits him from behind –

He roars, as something bladed tears into his back, as he jolts his arms and feels the snap of spinal column under his hands. Already, he’s whirling around, three of them behind him in silver uniforms moving in to strike with rifles raised like melee weapons. He smirks, because he’s better, because he knows how to duck and weave and meet their blows with more of his own laden with twice the ferocity. One of them catches him in the stomach, but he leans into it, itching for the _reason_ , he’s already dropping his head and raising his shield and there’s _nothing_ , nothing in the world but the crunch of Skrull cranium collapsing under the force of his fist, nothing but the strangled scream that stops when the edge of his shield cuts through Skrull vocal chords, nothing but the battle-blind euphoria he’s all but forgotten as the last one says _please_ in English and he

_slices –_

“Jesus,” someone says.

He looks up, as two men crawl out from under a workbench in the corner, as Steve stands there with red blood dripping off the edge of his shield, still in the fight, their bodies still warm around him –

“What the fuck,” the taller of them says, protective goggles still slung around his neck. “What are you – shit, man, how are we supposed to eat now?”

The other one’s gone stock-still and wide-eyed, because he’s looking at Steve’s shield. “Where’d you get that,” he says, a quaver in his voice.

Steve looks at them, feels a warm runnel of someone else’s blood run down the side of his nose.

“I took it off a dead man,” he says, the barest twist of a wry smile on his lips as as he starts to pry a brick of C-4 out of his belt. “I suggest you leave,” he says darkly. He shakes blood off his shield with a snap of his wrist.

They look like they might actually piss themselves, but they’re still standing there.

“Who are you,” the shorter one chirps out.

“ _LEAVE_ ,” Steve snarls, and that’s all it takes for them to scamper, their shitty sneakers sounding on the metal grating of the floor. He swipes a hand over his face and it comes away red, smears it off on his pants and feels it soak through, warm and sticky and rank with copper. He stalks around, presses brick after brick to the undersides of consoles, the detonator wires already snug and their signals already daisy-chained. There’s nothing he could learn even if he wanted to, everything on the monitors is in Skrull, and he doesn’t have an ounce of patience for recon right now.

He’s slotting the last one into place when he hears a deafening rush outside.

God _damn it_.  

He stalks out of the building, kicking ice off the metal platform as he goes. The two men are almost at the far edge of the beach, their dark footfalls crunching in the snow. He is expecting a transport, a gunship with an ultimatum, a row of tanks to take him back to New York in chains.

It’s not a transport, it’s not one of the enormous crafts that chased him up the Hudson, it’s not a tank.

It’s just one man, an enormous man in a crouch at the foot of the ramp, his blond head bowed, the dark of his cape billowing around him a little as the wind whips over the lake.

“Steven,” K’arr’n says in the warm boom of Thor’s voice, straightening.

Steve knows nothing but anger. 

“You fucking _coward,_ ” he bellows like a madman, spit and blood flecking out of his mouth, and his shield has left his hands before he can even think about it. He doesn’t care who he’s attracting, doesn’t care that their _emissary_ means they know where he is. "Is _NOTHING_  sacred to you," he screams. It’s a perfect throw, and he fully intends it to _maim_ if not entirely disarm the bastard–

He practically springvaults into a sprint in fury when K’arr’n parries it like it’s nothing.

“I’m going to _end_ you,” Steve snarls, and then his fist is connecting with something that feels like solid stone. He thinks he’s broken his hand, he thinks he’s miscalculated again because it didn’t hurt like this before, and then his body is alight with energy and all he can think is _you fucking coward_ –

He ends up in a gasping heap as he seizes and electricity jolts through his body in waves just violent enough to keep him down. K’arr’n raises his face, cold steel in his borrowed blue eyes, locks eyes with Steve, and raises an arm clasping some approximation of Mjolnir to the heavens.

A bolt of blue lightning rips through the cloud cover blotting out the moon, and Steve forgets how to breathe for a second.

“ _STEVEN_ ,” Thor’s voice rings out.

He stands there with something barren in his eyes and the lightning crackles around him. 

The lightning in Steve’s veins stops, and then there’s silence, nothing beyond the two of them in the moonlight and the creak of the ice shifting on the lake.

“Know me,” Thor bellows, and Steve feels his pulse leap in his veins. "I am not your enemy, brother." 

Steve hasn't heard his voice in so long, not since - since Tony - 

He rolls himself over. “You were dead,” Steve pants, not daring to believe.

Thor walks across the snow in silence and crouches beside him. 

“Aye,” Thor says grievously. Quieter than Steve has ever heard. “Some time ago. As were you.”

He leans forward and extends a hand.

Steve is shaking when he finally gets his lungs back and takes it.

He lets himself look, finally, drinks in Thor, shining in the midst of everything dead and rotting. He is magnificent, as he always was. He bears no marks of whatever it took to kill him, whatever cosmic force Steve doubts he would even understand. But there are lines around his eyes. He's beginning to look like Odin used to look. Inscrutable. Weary with the weight of kingdoms. Weary with the weight of all things. 

Thor stares at the dark smear of violet-green blood on his palm where he’s pulled Steve to his feet.

“Stay thyself,” Thor says, a hand on each of Steve’s shoulders. “What forces have conspired to distress you so,” he says softly.

“I’m not – distressed,” Steve lies, reeling. “Just, you’re alive, I thought you were...give me a minute, ok.”

“You just attacked me,” Thor says, “you are distressed.” Softer, he says, “You smell of death.”

Steve wonders if he should be ashamed or not.

“I thought you were a Skrull,” Steve says, and Thor grimaces.

“It grieves me that my identity has been employed to wound,” Thor says. “I am sorry. Heimdall directed me - what brings you here?”

 Steve can’t do anything but hold the detonator out in his palm, as if it explains any of this, him skulking around in the dark covered in Skrull blood or the human _prisoners_ he must have seen sprinting down the beach.

“Walk with me,” Thor says quietly, and Steve tries his damndest to get his face under control. Thor isn’t feeling talkative, apparently, because he just kneels to pick up Steve’s shield and passes it over without a word.

They work their way across the beach. Steve hunches a little, because the muscles in the back of his shoulder still have yet to knit themselves back together. It’s bitterly cold, colder now that Thor’s dispersed the marine layer, and the moon spills over the beach and sets the silhouettes of the apple orchard in the distance into spindly shadows.

They’ve crossed the wide field and gotten to the edge of the orchard when Steve puts a hand on Thor’s massive shoulder to slow him so he can turn around and detonate.

It’s a well-balanced explosion. He might have been proud of it in another life; Sharon always said she was better at explosives. It blossoms up in a fireball before sliding off the pier and through the frozen surface of the lake. It sits there, half-floating, smoking and aflame, and Steve wonders idly what he just destroyed.  

Thor doesn’t even ask, and it occurs to Steve that maybe he’s not the only one that just wanted to watch something burn.

“Where have you been?” Steve asks, when he finds his voice. It comes out in a broken quaver, and what a _joke_ he is, like he ever even knew how to be even-keeled and noble –

“In Asgard,” Thor says, tired like he’s never been. “The Invasion was not confined to your realm. My forces are decimated.” He reaches up to set his hammer in the sling beneath his cape. “As yours are, I would imagine.”

“Where have you been in all of this? Do you even know what’s happening here?”

Thor bows his head. “I did not come to stay,” he says quietly.

“Answer my _question_ ,” Steve says.

“I was here,” Thor says sadly. “I fought with the Avengers.” He sighs a sigh that seems sadder for the giant of a man it’s coming from. “Never has your loss been felt so acutely,” he murmurs.

Steve stares. “You were here, and you _left?_ ”

“I am needed,” Thor says, “in Asgard. Losing Midgard was nothing short of disastrous. It is the gate,” he says. “The gate through which all other things flow. After Ragnarok we were divided and scattered, and now…” He bows his great blond head, looking as weary as Steve feels.

“Losing Midgard,” Steve echoes.

“Aye,” Thor says.

“You abandoned them,” Steve says, and it’s almost a whisper. “They’re barely scraping by and you _leave–_ ”

“It was not my choice, Steven,” Thor says. “I mourned for those who had fallen–”

“Did you mourn for Tony,” Steve spits. “Did you even think to see where he ended up at the end of the day–”

“I did not come here to discuss Stark,” Thor says, with a venom that Steve’s never heard in his voice before.

“Stark,” he echoes, edging on hysterical laughter. “He’s _Stark_ , now, like he’s, I can’t _believe_ you–”

“He was responsible for your death,” Thor says sharply. “Do not forget that he used my image to make an abomination that felled one of our own.” He catches himself, looks away into the expanse of the dead orchard, fills his voice with something that isn’t barely-contained fury. “His arrogance is unforgiveable. I do not wish to speak to him again,” he says quietly, his anger burning itself out as quickly as it’s come.

“You won’t have to,” Steve bursts, “he’s in a coma because he tried to kill himself.”

Thor looks genuinely startled.

“I did not know he was still alive,” Thor says slowly. “I did not expect you to harbor much more than acrimony for him. To say he has done you a great wrong rings a lie.”

Steve can’t help himself from laughing, an ugly harsh sound that rips out of his throat, because it’s so wrong, it’s so wrong and nobody cares to look long enough to see, and how is he supposed to explain when everyone’s been deaf for so long. He can’t help but laugh, until it’s not laughing anymore, until it’s trying not to scream with it, because it’s all so true and simple and foolish and _accurate,_ the disagreement to end all wars, he thinks, bitter and too numb to be heartbroken, the disagreement Tony is bleeding for when he got to skip away with a heart full of lead.

“We have all suffered,” Thor says quietly, as if he’s reading his mind, as if Steve’s forgotten, and the swell of indignity rises up in him again.

“We haven’t suffered like he has,” Steve says raggedly.

“He has brought a great deal of this upon himself,” Thor says.

Steve thinks, for the first time, that perhaps war does ruin irreparably.

“They tortured him,” Steve says, lost, as if it matters, as if anything he says carries weight here. “They sent a spy,” he says, tears burning in his eyes, “a spy with my face, who no one could tell wasn’t me. He had to deal with that,” Steve says, trembling, “alone. I went to the tower, Thor, our _home_ , he was chained up like a slave, and they were - Tony was begging me, _begging_ me to kill him, they…”

Thor is terrifyingly silent.  

“Do you even care,” Steve asks, terribly quietly.

“I wish things were not as they are,” Thor says.

“Can you–”

“Do not ask me,” Thor says dully. “I do not have the power to change fate.”

“He was your friend,” Steve shouts, because it’s not _fair_. “He’s saved you dozens of times, this isn’t about fate, he’s _dying_ , he’s-” Steve looks at the sky like maybe his eyes aren’t brimming with furious tears. “We were a team once,” he says desperately, wondering if Thor had this moment. He must have, long ago, in a realm Steve can’t begin to imagine, fighting a battle Steve wouldn’t know how to win.

It’s Thor’s silence that makes Steve realize how desperate he must sound.

“You love him,” Thor says sadly.

“Yes,” Steve says.

“You have always loved him.”

Steve wonders if the truth should be so hard to hear.

“Why are you here,” he says miserably. “What can Midgard _possibly_ hold for you now?” He throws his words out into the cold, his breath fogging in the air. He wants to be bitter. He wants Thor to hurt.

(He’s so very low.)

“I came here because I heard you were alive once again,” Thor says, and Steve hates the way he’s looking at him, pity and sorrow and maybe weary disappointment in his eyes. “And to give you a warning, as leader.”

“Carol is leader,” Steve murmurs. “You can–”

“I will not go back with you,” Thor says, looking to the stars. “I fear it would do more harm than good. This world holds pain for me still,” he says, like it’s a shameful confession. “Wounds that I do not wish to revisit.”

“The rest of us don’t have the luxury of running away,” Steve says.

Thor does turn away, then. 

“You need to be vigilant,” Thor says, his back to Steve. “I can no longer control the clouds as I once did.”

“What was that, then,” Steve says. “Back there, on the beach.”

“That was a trifle,” Thor says. He turns back around with a piece of twig he’s snapped off of one of the trees. “The skies have changed. Your air is foul. The Skrull are bending nature to suit their whims.” He presses it into Steve’s hand. “This is not winter’s doing. The wood is dead.”

Steve looks, and doesn’t understand what he’s supposed to be seeing.

“This was your world, too,” Steve says. “It was your task.”

Thor’s eyes have never looked so desolate.

“Do you think I have not lamented,” Thor says. “I am trying. I am trying to atone for my failures. My absence in your time of need is one of them.”

It’s Steve’s turn to look away, then.

“I do not have the forces to spend on this. I am barely managing to recall my own,” Thor says.

“We used to be your own,” Steve says.

Thor stares at him for a long time.

“I have made mistakes,” he says at last. “As have we all. I will return when I can.” He pulls Steve into him, like they used to do, and Steve clings, his jacket sticky with blood on Thor’s breastplate.

“I am sorry,” he says in Steve’s ear, and then he takes to the skies.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SO, lots of people have done arts since last we met (2 months, ha, ha /sobs/). They're all in the relevant chapters!
> 
> I also uploaded this [PLAYLIST](http://8tracks.com/kiyaar/sins) that I have been writing to, if you want to cry into your pillow, cuz THAT'S WHAT I DESIGNED IT FOR.


	25. Good-Bye to All That

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please review the tags.

 

This rhythm, he’s familiar with.

He burns his clothes (burns the evidence) until his hair smells of ash, stomps the fire out into slush, shivers and presses his legs together and digs a wicking layer out of his pack. 

He needs to get back. He’s done. He’s had his tantrum. Had it, loosed his anger out here in the snow, dispatched his faceless monster of an enemy, and now he’s hollow, hollow and cold and angry that there are apparently _allies_ and it doesn’t make a rat’s ass of a difference. He’s angrier than he’d like to admit that his heart is aching for Thor and Tony and everything they were, _before._

He notices, this time, drifting through the trees like a ghost. Evidence of people, stubborn people, like him (resilient, he would have thought, once), who root like weeds and snarl until they die. Lanterns, campfires, a flashlight, once, a mile or so off. It’s only because he’s _better_ that he can see it at all from this far away. He doesn’t make contact. He suspects he wouldn’t like what he’d find. He suspects those men back there are what passes for honor now in this burnt-out shell of a world.

He is coming to realize that this is it: the end of the line.

It always got better, before. Something always _gave_. New lungs, new life, second, third, fourth chances. _You lucky bastard_ , Sam said once, and clapped him on the back. All that time in the trenches without a scratch, all that time unscathed while he buried his men and everyone _left –_

Five miles, six miles, _miles_ , in the dark, miles back to nothing, miles back to the barest of lives with no promise of a future and the sky a dim haze to light the way.

 _Leave_.

He’s warm enough. He won’t start starving for days, worst-case. The star is burning on his back.

Built for the cold.

The sky lights up behind him, and he wonders, briefly, if lightning storms are right for this time of year when he feels a wave of heat on his neck.

He’s turning around as the fireball goes up. He has the absurd impulse to put a hand up to shield his face, but he’d be dead already if it was a nuke – he’s not blind, his skin isn’t melting off. There’s just the desolate roar of the wind and the ungodly pillar of fire and ash ballooning up to the dismal grey sky.

He’s watched a lot of bombs, seen a lot of people die, and that was a significant payload.

There’s nothing in that direction but Ontario. His rational half suggests they wouldn’t wipe it away. They must have supply depots there; it’s a major population center, air traffic suggests it’s valuable. The Skrulls are nothing if not economical.

Earth is theirs now, after all.

“– _dumbass_ ,” someone half-sobs.

Steve’s head snaps around.

Carol lands in a sloppy skid, her hair wild and blown, energy sparking up her black-covered arms. She dives at him, throws a hand back to smooth the snow over both their boot prints, winds her arms up under Steve’s shoulders.  

“Are you ok,” Steve says, by far the least important question he wants to be asking, and Carol kicks off.

“I saw the first explosion, absorbed another,” she bellows to beat the rush of air as she takes them up above the tree line. “What were you thinking,” she snaps, her voice rent and desperate and grateful in his ear, “I said _we’ll deal with it together,_ not _you have an open invitation to paint a target on all of our backs – ”_

A third explosion sounds behind them.

Steve flexes his arms so he’s locked into Carol’s grasp and cranes his neck around to look. It’s across the lake, a little to the southwest. He can’t be sure, but it looks like –

“Did they just blow up Toronto?” he breathes.

“No,” Carol shouts. “Toronto’s further west; that was some survivor town. They’re too invested in the cities to level them.” Steve wonders if she realizes she’s shaking.

He stares at the black nothing of the lake beneath them, at the luminous reflections of craft hovering over the water, of the lit dots of more observatories what must be 20 miles on, 40, 60, and the particulate cloud is blazing like a beacon next to the dimmest one, the only one burned to the ground, back in the direction he was traveling from –

“That’s 20 miles away,” she’s shouting. “It’s the nearest city to that support base you fucked up. Likeliest perps,” she says, and it would be wry if this weren’t Carol coming down from hours of panic. “They don’t know what you losing your shit looks like.”

“Did I do that?” he asks, and he’s fairly certain he can feel his blood slowing.

“Do you get it yet,” she shouts over the wind.

Steve tallies with freezing fingers as he clings to Carol’s arm around his chest, and it’s nothing like flying with Tony. Tony would tell him it’s not his fault, it was an accident (it wasn’t an accident), Tony would tell him there’s always a tomorrow to make it right, but what if there isn’t, what if he never makes any of it right –

Lives snuffed out because of him. He’s done it before; he tries to match up that burning crater in the ground to human lives erased, knows it’s nothing, nothing at all to what they’ve already lost, knows _people die in war._ Knows he doesn’t feel anything he should be feeling. 

Thinks it’s going to have to be something he lives with.

Just like all the other things.

Tony would say he’s turning into a stranger, and fuck if that doesn’t make him wither in Carol’s arms.

 

\- - -

 

Carol brings spoonfuls of instant coffee to her mouth between strides.

“He said it was important,” Steve says, drifting along a few feet to her right, wondering if mainlining caffeine would do anything to quell any of the fifteen intolerable things he’s feeling right now. “He risked leaving Asgard unprotected to come here. He said he can’t control the weather anymore. That doesn’t _concern_ you?”

“It’s winter,” she says bitterly. “It’s gonna keep being winter, I don’t know what you want me to do about it.”

Steve stops short. “Has he been here before?”

Carol throws her spoon back down into the canister and wrenches the door to the conference room open.

“Look,” she says. “This is now a situation. They’re moving 20,000 bodies tonight, routing everything down through Rochester. They’re gonna be sending patrols crawling all over the water for the next week and a half.”

Clint sits bolt upright from where he’s been sprawling. “What?”

It’s not just Clint. Danny starts to stir in the corner, and Steve thinks maybe he should feel guilty for that; how many days must he have been out of commission for what he’s done for him? Logan is leaning back in one of the swivel chairs, too, his booted feet kicked up on the conference table, and – a tiny swell of indignation rises in him – a blond pile of paws and ear tucked up into the crook of his elbow, sound asleep. The minute Clint starts to stretch, though, the puppy wakes, tumbles out of sleep and into a ridiculous howl thrown in Steve’s direction as she climbs onto Logan’s shoulder like she’s scaling a mountain.  

“Twenty _thousand?_ ” he says around a mouthful of cigarette. “Hey,” he says to the puppy, and whispers in her ear for a minute before she relaxes into a muted growl and slinks back down into Logan’s lap.

“Thank Steve,” Carol snaps, and takestaking an armful of rolled-up maps from Maria. “Can you please put her to sleep before we get started?” She nods at the puppy as it curls its tongue around Logan’s ear.

“Shit,” Danny says.

The urge to sink into the floor starts to feel unmanageable.

“Can we,” Steve murmurs, leaning over the table next to her, “can I have a minute, I didn’t– – ”

“It needs to wait,” Carol says, dragging the map across the table.

“It doesn’t bother you,” Steve murmurs, the weight of their eyes pressing at him (ignore it, there’s nothing to be done) from where they’re sunk into their chairs at the far end of the table. “He’s been gone since the invasion, and now he shows up and – ”

“If it was important,” Carol says sharply, “he’d be here himself.”

Steve is opening his mouth to respond when he catches Clint shaking his head.

“Carol,” he starts, again, hushed, “if we’re grouping, we need to talk about Tony – ”

“ _We_ are not grouping,” she says, louder than he’d intended for this to go, but ok, Carol. Her show. “I need to make sure you didn’t just fuck us all over. That’s what we’re doing here. It takes us an hour to mobilize if we have to move somewhere. Luke and Peter were out when you blew that station up, I’ve been out all night looking for all of you, do you _get it_ – ”

“Actually, Cage just got back,” Maria says, “He’s eating.”

“Well, thank fuck for that,” Carol says, throwing her hands up. “Peter is two days late checking in,” she snaps. 

After all the trouble, after everything, after he chased them out of their last home, _this_ –  

 _Responsible_ , he thinks.

He doesn’t know what face he’s making, but Carol has moved on to ignoring him, and Maria is already recapping. “He said there was another body dump here,” she mutters to Carol. “Blue lips again; that’s the eighth this month, so that rules out our theory about it being confined to the tri-state area.”

“Body dump,” Steve says, leaning in to get a better look at the map. “What is going on?”

“Get out of the way,” Carol says flatly.

Because Steve still hasn’t learned to pick his battles, he shifts up, straightens, plasters earnestness on himself. Conviction. “Let me help,” he says. This is what they used to call reaching out. “What do you need me to do? I can – do you want me to find Peter, I can – ”

“You’ve helped enough,” she snaps, and slaps something hard and plastic into his palm, toes up to meet his height, levels her eyes and _dares_ him _._ “Go shower,” she says. “You’re covered in blood, that’s why she’s barking at you. I’ll catch you up if you miss anything.”

She sits down, and Steve looks at his hand. It’s a baby monitor.  

The rest of them filter in. Maria perches on the edge of the table and puts her hair up into a tiny ponytail and looks more worried than he’s really comfortable with while Clint and Logan eye him and his blood-covered clothes with moderate disgust. He shifts, takes the minute he needs to realize that no one cares if he comes or goes, that he’s not calling the shots.

This is maybe the part where he’s supposed to ask for direction.

“Tony,” Carol says bitterly, and reaches across the table to thumb up the monitor’s volume. “Your turn.”

Steve turns it over in his hands and thinks, _guilty._

 

\- - -

 

Hank has taken off most of the bandages.

Steve doesn’t ask how long he’s been down here. Wants to ask, should ask about that and more, _when did you sleep last, what are you doing here,_ top of the list is _where’s Strange_ , but that goes overlooked, too, because Tony looks worse than dead, and Steve can’t tear his eyes away.

His skin is out again. Steve feels obligated to cover him. He knows it’s absurd, but he aches to look at him, the ghastly pallor of his skin in the wash of blue-green from the monitors that look like they’re about 20 years too old to be attached to Tony’s person. Everything’s stitched but the plasma burns, ugly lines of dark pucker running over his chest. He looks brittle.  

He looks terrifyingly frail.

“Are you sure _?_ ” Steve asks.  

“No,” Hank says irritably. “I said _it could be a stroke_ , it could be a hundred other things, I don’t have the imaging equipment to do the assessment he needs, he’s – he’s _not good,_ Steve. I told you I’d call you. I haven’t called you.”

Tony isn’t good.

He could be a dead thing; it’s only the breath rattling in him, the rush of the ventilator and the tube taped into his mouth and the thousand monitors taped on the scarce few patches of unspoilt skin, that let Steve know otherwise.

 ( _You wanted this, you needed to see him – )_

“Carol said he was in a coma,” Steve pushes. He doesn’t know what that means. He doesn’t know what he wants to hear.

“Technically,” Hank says. “He’s heavily sedated. He may have brain damage.”

Steve is nodding, he’s screwing his face up to stave off the itch that lets him know tears are well on their way. He lets himself look back at Tony for the tenth time, needs to look, to see him there, even though it sends dizzy bursts of panic through him when he imagines him lying there forever, even though it _hurts_ to look at him like Steve’s never let anything hurt him before, and Tony would rather die than come out of this with brain damage –

“His blood alcohol level was .36,” Hank rattles off, flipping quietly through Tony’s chart with one clawed hand. “He’s malnourished, he’s got the beginnings of a lung infection because he aspirated water, he’s had intermittent palpitations – he’s always had a heart condition, you know that.”

“Why isn’t he healing,” Steve rasps, and clears his throat. “Extremis should’ve repaired some of the damage, he shouldn’t be – ”

“Oh, he’s healing,” Hank says. “You try replacing half your blood volume with ethanol and let me know how it goes.”

“It’s been almost 2 weeks,” Steve says, almost to himself. “He should be.”

“You know, I’ve already been over this with Carol,” Hank says, “I – ”

“Please,” Steve says to the floor.

Hank sighs. “His body can’t keep up. Extremis...” He slides his glasses off and slings them onto the table he’s sitting next to. “If I had to guess? That virus they uploaded, what took out all the other StarkTech? It did a number on his hardware, too. I don’t know what needs to be done to repair it. That’s more mechanics than it is biology, to a point, but I have no way of knowing. There’s no way to interface with the nanites in his blood, not with him – even if there _was_ , from what little I’ve read of Maya Hansen’s research, he substantially modified the tech to suit his own biology. It’s like he built his own operating system – that’s a gross oversimplification, but the damage I could do just trying to bring it back online without his guidance would be…”

Disastrous. Hank doesn’t need to extrapolate. Steve, for his part, is stuck on trying to imagine what disabling Extremis – shutting down Tony’s _hardware –_ could possibly look like, wondering if it’s half as ugly as what it took Tony to make himself that way in the first place –

He slides down into the chair because he doesn’t know how he can keep standing.

“No,” Hank says, and he’s hauling him up, gently, terribly strong. “Absolutely not.”

Steve opens his mouth to argue, and then imagines Tony’s face, the mute terror that’s settled into his eyes.

(As if Tony is aware of anything right now, it’s the most merciful thing that’s happened to him, the only reason he’s here and not _resting_ , finally, is because of Steve – )

He supposes he should be grateful if Tony recognizes him at all after this.

“You need to get someone else in here,” Hank says, and he’s kind enough to open the door instead of pushing Steve through it. He checks his watch. “I’ve been doing 4–hour naps. Everyone else is otherwise engaged. I don’t want to put him in restraints, and I don’t really want to sedate him longer than we have to, so the kindest thing to do is to have a sitter with him.”

Steve stares at him, mute.

“Your face is not the first thing he needs to see,” Hank says flatly.

It’s entirely different, hearing it out of someone else’s mouth.

He thinks, dimly: _Carol had no right_.

Steve nods, because there’s nothing else to do, and gathers his shield, crusted with Skrull blood.

He leads himself away, the baby monitor cradled in one elbow, and thinks that none of them have any right, that Tony’s at their mercy and no one realizes how much of a responsibility that is, that no one wants it. Steve just has to trust, trust Tony to them and their petty grudges, and Tony’s just _lying there,_ clinging to life when his body wanted to be gone a long time ago, Tony is lying on the other side of the door that Beast is locking –

 _He_ had no right, and it stops him in dead in the empty hallway.  

 _Mercy_ , he thinks, and it brings him to his knees right there.   

 

\- - -

 

They didn’t wait for him to start the meeting.

He stands in the doorway, listens to Carol talk about Thor and the new curfew schedule that’s Steve’s fault.  Restrictions on movement. Supply runs need to be made, the tech we talked about. Trade if you have to. Start looking for new boltholes, In Case. We’re low on getaway vehicles for non-fliers; a truck would be nice next time if you can find the gas for it.

She gets around to it after all that. After the important things.

“We need to be better,” she says.

She says it to eight tired faces, wan and sallow and wanting to be done with this briefing.

Steve hunches a little lower against the wall and lets himself feel the dull desolation that’s barely even rearing in him anymore instead of bursting in like he should be doing. He fists his hands up and listens to them breathe, listens to Carol ask them – _ask_ , as if this is something to be civil about – to be considerate ( _considerate)_ , asks them to help with what they can, to realize that he’s _adjusting_. In captivity for months, she says, calm, level. Mistreated, she says, and doesn’t even stumble on it. Medically induced coma, she lies, nary a mention of bottles or bleeding or that rope made of torn sheets Steve can’t forget the feel of.  

They blink at her. This is a normal day, perhaps.

“None of us have a lot of patience right now,” she says. “Just do what you can.”

Doesn’t say _if he wakes up_.

They always do what they can, don’t they.  

If Steve had their ears, if he was in there with them, if this was another time and he was the one holding the threads, he would say what really needs to be said. He’d do it so fucking calmly they’d mistake him for Churchill; he’d _tell them_ that they need to get over themselves, that they can’t afford to be petty, that Tony thinks they hate him, that it’s their friend down there on life support, their _teammate_ , that he’s too ashamed to even ask for help, that he thinks he doesn’t deserve to live anymore because they _left him there_ , that he thinks they’d rather he’d have died and he might be right. How do they not understand that they ripped him apart, how do they not see him bleeding and terrified and hurting, how do they not get that they took _everything_ from him, how are they all too busy feeling sorry for themselves to work up an ounce of compassion, _what has it ever cost them to be kind_ –

“It’s four,” Clint says, nothing approaching even the vaguest of apologies in his voice. “Are we done?”

Steve thinks that maybe this is how it happens. You stop looking. You don’t notice. You don’t care.

They maybe don’t realize they’re terrible. 

They maybe don’t realize they’re losing themselves.

Steve turns away to hide himself in another one of these unmarked, sterile rooms, and feels, still – _again_ – like he maybe should have died a long time ago.

 

\- - -

 

He musters up his waste of a body and tries to get some sense of the scale of their bolthole away from home.  

(Grounded, _useless_ , a protector who can’t protect – )

It takes 49 paces to bring him to the end of a corridor, one of five arrayed in a star pattern, he thinks, wings connected by a series of cross-laid tunnels, narrower, utilitarian, not the wide corridors they’ve been walking through. Two levels, the medical bay buried deep in the southwest corner, as far as he can tell, which is concerning; it’s probably under the lake (there’s probably no need for concern, Tony probably sold the designs for these). The walls are cold when he puts his hands to them. The noise of the generators is dulled down here. It’s quiet enough that the breath in his lungs gets sucked away into nothing.  

He wanders into empty rooms. Finds a vast hall with rows and rows of shelving with thousands of identical metal boxes. He rips the lid of one of them open and finds bottles. Albuterol inhalers in one, gluten-devouring enzymes, blood pressure and hypertension meds in another. Everyone perfectly printed with the name of a Congressman. A senator. A presidential aide.

He throws one of them against one of a shelving unit and waits for the echoes to settle.

There are more living quarters, dormitories with identical sets of stainless steel bunk beds bolted to the floors. Eight, ten, twelve of them and he stops counting, all empty. They could all have a wing to themselves, if they wanted. It’s that huge. He tallies, briefly, and realizes that this facility must have been meant for a thousand people. Supplies being what they are, they could stay here for years, maybe. Small wonder they aren’t fighting.

He wonders how many more of these there are. Wonders if the Skrulls know about them. He didn’t, but how many people did, how many knew about these, how do they know they aren’t being watched, how could they ever have anticipated needing security to defend against their own faces –

He thumbs at the strap of his shield slung over his shoulder and walks through hall after empty hall, vibrating in his own skin.

The baby monitor is resolutely silent.  

 

\- - -

 

It’s a blind corner. They collide with a dull pain that rockets down his arm, and Steve decides it’s his fault. He wasn’t looking.

The someone he’s bumped into lurches back. “Sorry,” Steve says, unsure if he’s even capable of being sorry right now, and strides past, not trusting himself not to – combust, maybe, he doesn’t need to break down in front of anyone else this week.

“Steve,” Peter says, a wretched sound rasping out of his throat, and Steve stops.

He’s in sock feet, his hair gleaming in damp spikes. His skin looks red, abraded, almost like sunburn. The whites of his eyes are bloodshot. There are days’ worth of stubble coming up on his chin; Steve tries to remember seeing him with a beard, ever, and can’t. Peter was always the clean-cut type. He supposes an apocalypse brings out the ragged in people.

Peter’s arms are full of clothes, neatly folded. He holds a camera and something that looks like it might be actual film, on top, tucked right under his chin.  

“Tony,” Peter mumbles, as if that’s any explanation at all, clutching his bundle to his chest.

Steve reminds himself that this is what Peter does, this is what they do, that Steve was authority and reassurance once – as if he’ll ever be able to walk away from that – and that he’s already cried himself into sobbing three times this week and this needs to stop. They would have hugged, once, he would have clapped Peter on the back or something, that’s what he’s looking for, but physical contact with anyone feels like a transgression now, how can he when his other-self has –

“I looked in the power plant, I…he wasn’t in his room, I didn’t.” Peter presses his lips together and looks up, lost. “Do you know where he is?” he finally asks, his voice fracturing on the end of it.

Steve stares, because how is this possibly his burden.

“I just,” Peter says, bites at his lip, “ – _Cap,_ I’m really tired, do you – ”

“Tony tried to kill himself,” Steve says, because he doesn’t have the energy to lie. “He’s in a coma.”

It’s a thing that should be screamed instead of whispered quietly in this corridor.

Peter blinks, and blinks, and blinks.

“Oh,” he exhales, his eyes darting wildly around. He snatches absently at the mess of fabric spilling out of his arms, but it’s a half-hearted effort; the clothes are already strewn all over the floor. He clutches his camera with the tips of his long fingers, does his damnedest to keep his mouth from forming into the grimace it wants to be making, he’s _trembling_ with it, practically.

Steve wonders what the hell is it that makes people want to put up such a front for him

Peter is holding himself stiffly, his body folding in on itself a little as he brings his free hand up to clutch in his hair. There’s a gash across the back of his hand, neatly field-sewn, already starting to heal up, there are – _garrote_ marks, running around under his chin, laid over the ugly scar on his jaw –

_Peter is two days late checking in, he was supposed to be back yesterday –_

“You didn’t hear,” Steve says, and he can’t even find it in him to be sorry for how sour it sounds.

Peter looks up at him, and his skin seems almost yellow against the dark purple shadow-smears under his eyes. “No,” he says, looking so stupidly young, running his hands over and over his damn camera, “I was away, I,” he starts, and chokes, and looks away like he’s counting to ten, and Steve would like nothing more than to be cruel and tell him that never works. “When,” he says, finally.

“I don’t know,” Steve says honestly. “Five days ago.” He clenches his jaw and watches the hope drain away from Peter’s eyes. “What could you possibly want to talk to him about,” Steve says dully. “It’s not like any of you care.”

 _Apologize,_ Steve thinks, first. _Mean,_ he thinks, second.

He doesn’t really expect Peter to start crying, then.

“I wanted to apologize,” he tries to explain, looking lost and horrified and overwhelmed. “I just wanted, it’s.” He looks at the floor, and Steve watches the tears bead up and run off his chin. Steve catches the camera before it can smash when it falls out of Peter’s shaking hand. “I said some things,” Peter whispers to himself.

Steve is so very tired of watching everyone else falling apart, too. “Yeah,” he says, “We all say things.”

Peter looks at him like he can see through to his bones. 

“You were,” Peter says through his tears, “you were together.”

Steve can’t manage surprise anymore. “No,” he says, exhausted.

“I was cruel, wasn’t I,” Peter says, and he’s staring at nothing, trembling violently, and he sinks down to the floor and puts his head between his knees. “Oh my _god_.”

“It’s not your fault,” Steve says, feeling dismal, because he knows it’s his.

“I wanted to apologize,” Peter whispers, again, and scrubs his free hand up over his face. “I was harsher than I should have been, I was just, he never would have taken it like that, before, I just wanted to talk, I just, why he did what he did, and you two, I wanted – ”

Peter looks up, looking absolutely wretched.

“They used you,” Peter chokes. “Didn’t they, we knew they tortured him, but we _–_ ”

Steve thinks maybe he used to be a passable liar.

“He ran from me,” Peter says, drawing himself into somewhat of a ball, “I mentioned you, and he ran.”

"Yeah," Steve says to the floor, because he’s such a coward.

Peter stares at nothing. “Do you know what I said to him?" He clutches at his head, “I told him that _I didn’t know why you saved him_ , that’s what I told him, and I _meant_ it, you _two_ – ”

“We weren’t together,” Steve says.

“You might as well have been,” Peter says, “That’s why they sent a Skrull to be you, that’s why it worked – ”

“Well, since you have it all figured out,” Steve says dully.

“Don’t start with me,” Peter says, “Don’t talk to me about – both of you, you had to rip us all apart instead of taking a time out and trying to talk to each other – ”

Peter clamps his mouth shut and drags the clothes into his lap one by one.

It’s disarming, the grief in his face. Steve wonders when he learned grief like that.

“He’s really thin,” Peter says, after a while, “I thought he could have these, they’re Danny’s, I’m too short, but – he needs something smaller, he’s – ”

“Can you help me,” Steve blurts.  

Peter looks at him with ruined eyes. "What can I do," he says with a hollow laugh. What can I–" He looks down at his lap.

Steve slides down to sit next to Peter. "He's on suicide watch," he says. 

"Because of what they did to him," Peter says. It's barely a question. 

"I don't–" Steve says, irritated beyond belief, helpless,  _useless_ –

"There are a lot of ways to torture people," Peter says quietly. 

"Peter–"

"They're going to suspect," Peter says.

"Please don't spread that around," Steve says, swiping at his face. 

"It's a small house, it's not–"

“I want you to help me,” Steve says, cutting him off, because he can't think about that, everyone knowing what his face did, “I want, just listen, ok – ”

Peter looks wretched. "Is he gonna live," he mumbles. 

Steve sucks in a breath and looks at his knees. 

“He’s on suicide watch," he says, "if…when. _When_ he wakes up, someone needs to be with him, and I can’t – ”

He drifts into silence, because there are so many things that are _can’ts_ now. 

“Why couldn't you forgive each other,” Peter says, sounding desolate.

Steve bites into his tongue so hard blood wells up in his mouth.

“Can you just sit with him for a few hours,” Steve says, “while you’re here, while I – figure something out with Carol? Hank needs sleep.”

Peter is very still. “He’ll have someone,” he says, strangled, “he’ll. Don’t worry, I’ll…I can talk to Carol.”

“It’s not your fault,” Steve says quietly.

“I’ll take care of it,” Peter says.

“You’re not responsible,” Steve says.

Peter looks up, looking like he’s lived a thousand years.

“We’re all responsible,” he says.

 

\- - -

 

When the towel comes off, it’s still not dark enough.

K’arr’n is blond, Steve’s color, the straw-blond he’s never given a thought to changing until now. He pulls at it, teases some of the longer bits until they’re dry. He’s barely managing something gingery; it’s not nearly as dramatic a change as it needs to be. He’s getting there, edging into darker-looking, more of a fire starter, less of that open naivety, the easy broad smile they used to say made him approachable. He looks cautious. Older, maybe. He runs a hand through it, still damp, and wonders if he should start wearing glasses.

It needs to be browner than it is. Another batch.

It’s long already. It falls down around his temples when he dips his head in the bowl, then sticks flat and wet over his forehead. He won’t cut it. K’arr’n’s was spikier.

“What are you doing,” Carol says.

By the time he picks his head up out of the bowl, she’s holding the coffee canister in her hand, the bathroom door wide open behind her, looking nothing short of incensed.

“What are you _doing_ ,” she says again. Her hair is wet. She smells faintly like – darkroom chemicals, maybe, something artificial –

“There were 30 more canisters in the pantry,” he says, tired. “I looked, I thought – ”

“Are you kidding me,” she says, and he honestly doesn’t know what he’s done now. He dabs at a bit of coffee sludge that’s sliding down his ear. “What is this,” she says, and shakes the can at him.

“I thought it would be easier,” he says. “For Tony,” he clarifies, when she doesn’t move an inch.

“For Tony,” she echoes. “Tony, who’s in a coma.”

“I _know_ that,” he says irritably, snatching it back. “It’s,” he falters. “When he wakes up,” he says. “So he’s not – ” _Scared. Terrified._ “So I look different.”

Carol is very still for a minute.

“He’s not gonna wake up, Steve,” she says.  

“After all that,” he hisses, slathering the shit on his head and snatching at the plastic wrap in the sink. “He didn’t survive all of that so he could die _,_ ” Steve says, certain. So certain. (Terrified.) He finishes winding it, wipes the drips off his neck. Turns to Carol. “He’s never given up,” he explains, like it will calm the gallop of his heart when he thinks about that line on the monitor that indicates brain activity –

(This is not a _never_ sort of situation, he knows – )

“You need to not get your hopes up,” she says flatly. 

“Let me have this,” he snaps, doesn’t plan to, but does, “it’s the least you can do, give him the benefit of the doubt – ”

“It’s not about the benefit of the doubt – ”

“ – can you please just – ”

“ – the odds of alcohol-related coma patients waking are – ”

“ – don’t _tell_ me the odds, ok – ”

Carol puts him on the floor.

His arm comes up, automatically; his muscles don’t know any other way to be. Her arm presses into his throat, warm and light and solid as steel. He scrabbles his hands at her wrist and feels his airway constrict ever so slightly more for his trouble.

There’s energy boiling under her blue eyes, and Steve is utterly disarmed.

“Is this the only language you understand now,” she snarls, “because reason doesn’t really seem to have been doing it for you, Steve.” Her hair falls into his face.

“I thought you’d understand,” he says weakly. It’s taking most of his energy to keep her arm loose enough to breathe.

“You need to check yourself,” she snaps. “You’re developing a problem with boundaries.”

“That base needed taking out – ”

“THAT WAS NOT YOUR CALL TO MAKE,” she roars over him. “You are _out of control_ – ”

“I’m _sorry_ ,” he yells back. “I had to do something – ”

“ _I’m not your Captain,_ ” she parrots at him, “isn’t that what you said to Maria, Steve, you said you were leaving – ”

“ – and then Tony happened,” he rasps, “get off of me – ”

“LISTEN,” she hisses. “Shit or get off the pot, Steve. Because you’re fucking up my ship. I have active ops, I _had_ active ops until you gave them a fucking beacon – ”

“ – I didn’t – ”

“ _Shut up_ , Steve _._ I’m trying to do what I can. There are things bigger than you and your anger management issues in play. Do you know how many safe houses are left on the list? Two. Two safe houses and we start running, for real, for good. We disband. This is it, do you _get it?_ I didn’t ask for this. It fell into my lap, because I was on the right continent when the shit hit the fan and _you weren’t there_ and neither was Tony, but I did it, because that’s what we do, Steve, we fight, and all you’ve _done_ since Fury threw his life away to save your sorry ass is make messes that I don’t have the _resources_ to clean up – ”

“Like you didn’t have the resources to go back for Tony?” he snarls.

“What do you want,” she yells. “The damage is done, they got what they wanted – ”

“I want a chance to _help_ him,” he yells back.

“ _You do not need to be the one to help him_ ,” she screams. “We don’t _get_ second chances. What is it you think you can do, Steve? What is it you think you can do to _help_?”

“You told me to _fix it,_ Carol – ”

“And then he took a stomach full of painkillers and drank a liter of Patrón – ”

“Was I supposed to _leave_?” he says. “Was I supposed to leave without trying to make it right – ”

“You can’t make everything right!”  

Her voice rings off the tile because Steve has nothing to say to that.

“You do what suits you, “she says bitterly. “You always have, you do what you want to do because you can get away with it. You think you can save everyone. You meddle,” she chokes out.

“I just – ”

“No, this is where you _listen,_ ” she shouts. “This is where you take my fucking word for it, Steve, you don’t know what it’s like to be powerless like that.”

“Yes, I do,” he hisses. He did, once, it’s there, it’s still in him somewhere, he remembers being helpless, eons ago, remembers –

Carol slams his shoulders into the floor, again, and Steve gets the message this time and stops struggling.

“I’m stronger than you,” she says. She draws her arm up, and there’s energy humming up into her hand, and Steve wonders, briefly, if she’s a Skrull, if everyone has gone insane but him, if she’s actually going to burn him –

“What do you think,” she snaps. “Think I could boil your brain if I wanted?”

Steve feels his Adam’s apple move against her forearm.

“What do you think, Steve,” she says, and her hand is warming on his throat –

“Don’t,” he says, and he _can’t push her arm off_ –

“How do I _look,_ ” she presses.

Steve looks at her, at her angry face and the deep shadows under her eyes and the ferocity in the curl of her lips.

“Like you could kill me,” he says. He’s certain they can both hear his heartbeat. “Like you could kill me if you wanted,” he chokes.

“Then what the hell do you think _you_ look like when you’re mad, Steve,” she whispers.  

_“Please,” Tony says, wood scraping his bare knees and he can’t even crawl, “I’ll do anything you want, anything – ”_

“Take a minute,” she says. “Take a minute and think of what it’s like for him, imagine what having you back is like, and then imagine what that betrayal would feel like – ” her voice warbles a bit “ – imagine being terrified every time you saw someone you trusted with _everything_ – ”

_“Tell me, Steve,” Tony says, his eyes stark and blue and desolate. “Tell me what I can do, what can I do to make it stop – ”_

“Stop,” he’s whispering, “ok, I. Ok.”

“You’re a soldier,” she says. “You’re a weapon.”

“I know,” he tries to say, but Carol tightens her arm again and he can feel his oxygen leaving –

“If Tony wakes up,” she says, “this is how he’s going to look at you. He’s not gonna see you. He’s going to see him. He’s going to wonder when you’re gonna hurt him. He’s gonna wonder why you haven’t.”

“Ok,” he says weakly. “I know.”

“It’s not your fault,” she says, “but you need to understand.”

“Ok,” he whispers. 

Her hands go away from his neck, and he coughs and coughs and feels his chest heave under her weight.

“Are we clear,” she says.

“Yes,” Steve says.

“Are you staying?”

“I don’t – ”

“Make a decision,” she says, and her eyes are cold, cold blue. 

“For now,” he gasps.

“I need you to play ball,” she says. “Because if you were me, you’d be throwing my ass out in the snow for the shit you’ve been pulling.”

Carol always has been one for candor.

“Ok,” he says.

“You stay out of the fucking way,” she says. “You’re grounded until you get your head on.”

He swallows. “Ok.”

“Leave him alone,” she says. “If he wakes up, you leave him alone until he’s ready.”

He turns his head away to the side. “Yeah,” he says, and chokes down the lump in his throat.

“You used to be a goddamned hero,” she says. “Start acting like one.”

He fixes his eyes on the floor and hopes she doesn’t notice what a slap that feels like.

Her weight is gone, then, and she’s holding her hand out to help him stand.

He doesn’t take it.

“It’s fine,” he says stiffly. He levers himself up on the toilet. It’s not fine.

Nothing is fine.

“Fine,” she says.

“I’m not the one that hurt him,” Steve says. “I didn’t hurt him. I wouldn’t.” He turns his eyes up to Carol and tries to feel defiant and doesn’t feel anything at all.

He wishes she’d give him something, but all she does is stare.

“You did,” she says. “It’s just that he didn’t start bleeding until you were gone.” She ducks her head, tugs her sleeves back over her wrists. She shrugs a little, like she doesn’t care, and she’s a far better actor than Steve knows how to be anymore. “It doesn’t matter,” she says dully. “You’re the one that has to make up for it.”

Steve looks anywhere but at her face, because she’s right.

She straightens up. Tucks her dog tags back into her shirt. Looks almost conciliatory when Steve rubs at his throat, and then decides she’s not going to be and rests her hand on the doorknob. Gives him one last searching glance.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and for the first time in a long time, he means it.

“You look like an idiot,” she says, and then she’s gone.

 

\- - -

\- - -

\- - -

 

 _“Take it out,” Tony gasps, as soon as the gag comes out of his mouth. “Take it out, please,_ please – _”_

_One of the guards nudges at it with his rifle, and Tony’s body bucks forward._

_“She’s so generous,” K’arr’n says, catching him around the waist, his voice strangled and bitter, and Tony feels his fingers curl around the base of it. He could sob, mortified and hopelessly grateful; it’s been a day, he doesn’t know what he would have done if he hadn’t come back, Veranke chained his arms around in front so he couldn’t –_

_K’arr’n drags it out of his body and fucks it back into him hard enough that Tony wails._

_“Don’t tell me what to do,” K’arr’n says in his ear, and Tony bites into the slot he’s chewed through his lip as K’arr’n stabs him in the neck with a needle. “Did you ask her for it?” He tugs it all the way out this time, holds it in front of Tony’s face, streaked with lube. “Did you_ thank _her?”_

_Tony wants to say no, how could he, it’s just one more thing, one more cruel touch, one more humiliation in a line of them, one more person to use him, one more reminder that it’s bullshit to think he’s living in a body that belongs to him, but K’arr’n is swiping his fingers around in Tony’s mouth –_

_K’arr’n wipes his hand on Tony’s back, says something in Skrull to the guard as he’s kicking his boots off. Whatever Tony’s been injected with is boiling through him, lighting him from the inside, calling the lines of everything into perfect clarity, the heavy humidity of outside drifting in through the balcony doors like it’s summer (it could be, by now), the hum of Steve’s lamp unbearable in his ears –_

_“She’s using you to fuck with me,” K’arr’n says. He shoves Tony onto his elbows and drags him back by the knees so he can feel a finger around inside him. Tony cringes away, halfway to crying already (he can’t help it, it_ hurts) _and K’arr’n is pulling his hair and Tony wants to sob that he doesn’t have to be cruel, he’ll do it, whatever it is, he’ll do anything to avoid worse (K’arr’n always comes up with worse), please –_

 _“ – so arrogant there’s no way to tell,” K’arr’n is saying, and he presses something cold and metal and spiked onto the skin behind Tony’s ear. “She thinks it’s working. She said you_ listened _.” He tosses something at the guard and then it’s hands on his hips, spreading him apart and there’s nowhere to go –_

_“Beg me for it,” K’arr’n says, nudging up behind him. “You begged her, didn’t you?”_

_Tony thinks if he opens his mouth, he’ll sob._

_“We do this as many times as you need to,” K’arr’n snaps, and buries himself._

_Blood dribbles down his chin and into the sheets. He’ll pay for that later, tastes it on his tongue, gasps and chokes on it while his lungs try to accommodate the unendurable weight of Steve’s huge body against his bruised mess of a spine. He won’t be able to hold them, he’s going to fall, K’arr’n is already fisting his hands brutally in Tony’s hair like he’s grasping at reins, reaching around to feel Tony’s balls dragging against the red silk duvet. He realizes he’s crying again, prays K’arr’n doesn’t see so he won’t turn crueler, but he doesn’t know how not to, he has no right, all he has to do is kneel here and let himself be used –_

_He buries his wet face in his carved-up arm when he feels his cock swinging heavy and hard between his legs._

_“Go ahead,” K’arr’n says, breathless and pleased, because he never misses anything. “Rub yourself on my sheets and see if you can get off that way.” He snaps his hips and drags Tony back by his thighs. “Are you picturing him? I know you’re not thinking about me.”_

_He’s not going to talk, he’s nothing, he doesn’t have thoughts anymore, he won’t bring Steve into this –_

_(He is, he’s thinking of Steve, he’s disgusting and Steve would be disgusted and he’s sorry, he feels like he’s going to be sick and he feels like he wants to come and he’s dizzy and K’arr’n is mad and he’s such a piece of trash –)_

_“You are,” K’arr’n whispers again, wraps two of Steve’s fingers under Tony’s collar and jerks his head back. “You’re thinking of him, you’d have_ _done this for him,_ pretend, _Tony.” He’s gasping into Tony’s ear, he’s close, maybe, he traces a finger over Tony’s jutting hip. “Close your eyes and think of America,” he murmurs, and Tony’s sure he’s dripping, he wishes he were better, he’s sorry, he’s_ sorry –

_“I’d be gentle,” K’arr’n is saying, and buries himself, deep, knocks the breath from Tony’s lungs. “If you asked me, I’d be gentle.” He feels around for Tony’s cock, jerks him a few times, slow and teasing, and Tony bites, bites, bites so he won’t beg. “Ask me to be gentle, Tony,” he whispers._

_No, he won’t, no, but he wants to, no, his mouth wants to say please, he doesn’t remember what kindness feels like (it won’t be kindness) –_

_“K’arr’n,” Tony sobs, and he doesn’t know what he’s asking for, he doesn’t know what to say, he can’t ask to be gentle, he can’t fool himself with that, Steve would have left him, Steve hated him, it’s not believable, Steve would have let him rot for this –_

_K’arr’n’s thrusting abates for a moment before he bashes Tony’s face into the headboard._

_“The next time you use my name, I’ll sell you to a breeding camp,” K’arr’n says, and he yanks on Tony’s leash hard enough that the blood from his nose slides down his throat –_

_(It’s going to be enough, someday, it will, K’arr’n will get tired of this, K’arr’n will sell him to someone who will have no compunction about beating him to death, someday he’ll be done paying – )_

_“ – we’re not lovers. You’re not a hero anymore, you’re_ nothing _, I_ own _you, do you understand?” K’arr’n is saying. He twists one of Tony’s nipples, the burned one, and Tony’s vision greys out with pain for a minute. “Rut against the bed, Tony,” he snarls._

 _Let me die,_ _he thinks_ , _let me die, let me die, just let me –_

 _“Why don’t you_ listen _,” K’arr’n hisses, scratches over Tony’s newest welts until Tony hears his own agonized screaming. “It’s like fucking a plank of wood,_ move _– ”_

 _He arches his back as much as he can, lowers his hips the last few inches, trembling down to his bones. K’arr’n whispers things to him,_ this is as good as it gets _and_ you wouldn’t last a day on the Peak _and_ my guards would fuck you if I told them to, _and this is better than those, he could love this if he tried, he just needs to try harder, needs not to be such a useless whore_ , _flexes his thighs, arches everything he can think of and it’s not enough, tries to put himself down, tries to drag up pleasure from the memories of what he used to be, but it’s useless, he’s useless, he doesn’t think he can get there, he’s sorry and he’s a terrible plaything and K’arr’n is going to hurt him if he doesn’t –_

_K’arr’n swears, fucks into him once, twice more and crushes them both to the mattress._

_K’arr’n wipes Tony’s hair out of his eyes, panting, and Tony’s heart pounds in his chest. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do, if he’s failed, if K’arr’n is going to put him out to kneel in the snow again, if he’s supposed to thank him, if he’s supposed to beg for more, if he’s supposed to clean K’arr’n off with his mouth or let K’arr’n kick him down to the foot of the bed –_

_K’arr’n rolls them over onto their sides and wraps one of Steve’s calloused hands around Tony’s swollen cock._

_He gives a little thrust instead of pulling out, undoes the manacle on his wrist, drags Tony’s hand down to his crotch, whispers_ calm down _and and_ relax _and_ you’ll do better tomorrow, won’t you _and runs Tony’s fingers over his own disgusting flesh. His hands shake, they’re always bleeding, he never wants to touch himself again, he wants to say no, wants to_ say _anything and doesn’t, rasps, whimpers, moans_ please _, lies there, the salt of his tears running into his gasping mouth, lies there and lies there and lets K’arr’n kiss his neck while he brings himself off, whimpers like the garbage he is when his body goes taut and breathless and he turns to putty in K’arr’n’s arms, lets K’arr’n nudge their come-covered fingers into his mouth and licks it all away –_

 _He lies there, tears streaking over his cheeks, as K’arr’n_ cradles _him, shoves a pillow under their heads, presses them together, draws the echo of a scream out of Tony when he strokes a hand absently across Tony’s beaten skin, rests his cheek against Tony’s neck so Tony can feel his breathing slow and deepen._

_Tony bites into his hand until he tastes blood when he watches the arm around his waist darken to green._

_He wishes he were better; he’d wrap his chains around K’arr’n’s throat, he’d press a pillow over his mouth and watch him struggle and die, he’d reach and close his fingers on the hilt of the knife and drag it across K’arr’n’s throat, if he weren’t a coward and he remembered what courage felt like, if it weren’t a dream that his body used to shine with red and gold –_

Calm down, someone says. Don’t try to breathe.

Hands on his face. Around his mouth. On his neck.

 _Coward,_ Steve’s voice hisses in his ear.

He doesn’t know how to say _no_ , _get off, please_ , can’t open his mouth, can’t close it, can’t breathe, everything is bright, there’s something jammed down his throat, he _chokes_ and bucks and tries to suck in air and _can’t –_

_Beepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeep –_

You’re ok, someone says, you’re ok. I’m going to sedate you, _calm down –_

He was always going to end up in hell. 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're wondering why this chapter took 3 months...go read [Plunge](http://archiveofourown.org/works/830761), my latest foray into the awful of 616 (and current-canon compliant). They tell me it's spectacularly sad. See, I was writing the whole time, just not this.
> 
> Next chapter: unexpected guests and confessions. 
> 
>  
> 
> Spoiler alert: I adore - ADORE - your comments. I love hearing from you. It's really the best part of my day.


	26. Tinder

There’s something buried in his throat.

 

“Look at me,” K’arr’n instructs in almost a whisper, and runs a thumb over his lip, and Tony moves his eyes obediently. “Lots of tongue,” K’arr’n breathes, and feeds him, inch by inch, torturously slow and heavy and warm on his tongue and crammed into his throat and his vision goes grey and spotted and mercifully dull –

 

You need to stop, it’s not real, Tony, you need to, don’t pull it out, it’s a resp – ok, your lungs can’t, _Tony_ –

He tries to beg with his eyes and his throat and his body like he’s learned to do when he’s been gagged, but the air stings his eyes and the lights bore into his skull and he wails –

 

“You used to talk to me,” K’arr’n is saying. He tilts Tony’s head back and works the gag into his mouth over the gash he’s chewed into his tongue. “All you do is scream,” he says, and Tony wonders how he can stand the smell, wonders how his neck isn’t melting off, wonders how he can be expected not to scream as he sees the brand glowing again out of the corner of his eye and –

“Do you know what it says,” K’arr’n says, angry and dull, brushing Tony’s hair out of his face. “It’s my name,” he hisses, and then he’s touching it and Tony’s screaming, he’s screaming, he’s screaming until bloosd washes up on his tonsils –

 

He doesn’t know what he’s done.

It’s dark, and the thought that he’s forfeit light for the rest of whatever existence he’s consigned himself to terrifies him marginally more than the pain rending him from himself like dull knives and the way he can’t move his hands because there are straps around them and someone is saying _manageable_ and _temporary_ and they didn’t have to, they didn’t need to jack his mouth open, he’d open his mouth if they asked, they didn’t _need to_ , not the straps or the tubes or the machines, he’ll be good, he’s _sorry –_

“You cannot keep sedating him this way –”

“Don’t tell me about patient care. He’s _your patient_ , Stephen.”

“I didn’t anticipate –”

“– I didn’t come here to be his nursemaid, you’re the damn doctor –”

 

“They still have oranges in Florida,” K’arr’n says, and slips another piece of tangerine into Tony’s open mouth.

It sits on his tongue until his throat remembers how to swallow. He thinks he’s been chained like this for days, his arms slung up torturously above his head, his mouth wrenched wide by the gag.

“The hydroponics lab is working on it. I think these are better.” He eats two lobes, feeds one into Tony’s mouth. 

Tony had forgotten oranges.

He thinks he’s forgotten most things.

“I bought you today,” K’arr’n says, and then there isn’t any more orange, there are just fingers in his mouth and the jingle of K’arr’n unbuckling his belt –

 

Someone slides a finger in under his lips, around his gums.

He bucks, there’s a syringe in the corner of his vision, they’re going to test him again, he’s going to be _done to –_

Breathe, someone is saying, in English, this time, and they’re pulling the tape off his face and ripping the scabs off his sores and dragging the bit out of his mouth and that hoarse wretched screaming sound is maybe him because he’s _alive_ –

 

“Tony,” Steve says, like he loves him, like it’s a prayer he’s always wanted to say, shucks his hands up the flat of Tony’s abs, sucks at his ear, snakes a broad forearm around his waist to tug him back down to the sheets.

“Where are you going,” he murmurs, and presses an open-mouthed kiss to the soft skin of his throat, “ _stay –”_

“I know something about that,” Clint says, mostly to himself, curling his fists around the edge of his bow. “Having someone you loved….”

He must realize no one talks to filth, because he falls silent.

 

“This one?” Rumiko says, and holds up the red dress.  

“I’ve always liked you in red,” he says, and she smiles, like the world is brighter for him being in it, like she’ll maybe make fun of him for it later and she knows he really means _I’ve always liked that dress on my floor_ and she swoops in to sit on his lap, to slide a hand under his shirt and whisper _I love you_ in his ear because they’re doing that now –

 

\- - -

\- - -

\- - -

 

It’s physically painful to look at his own reflection.

Steve dyes his hair obsessively, puts more coffee on whenever he has a free hour until it’s almost black and the smell gets into everything he owns, scrubs at his skin until it’s raw, most days, thinks maybe he should tear his hair out, considers buzzing it, considers permanent disfigurement and running away like a coward and lighting himself up in K’arr’n’s tower.

Carol told him, for a while. Reminded him, like clockwork, said _misplaced guilt_ and _compartmentalize_ and _you need to stop, Steve._

Now she usually just sends him away.

He doesn’t know how to say that he looks in the mirror and sees a rapist, or that Tony looks at him and sees a monster, or that everything he never allowed himself to want is ruined because of his face and _this_ is always going to come before that, now.

He doesn’t know how to be Not K’arr’n instead of Steve.

After a while, he stops looking altogether.

 

\- - -

\- - -

\- - -

 

“Whuh,” Tony slurs. “Why’m I.”

He doesn’t remember the rest of what he needs to say.

“Calm down,” they mumble. “You’re fine.”

“No,” he says, because they don’t understand. His mouth is unbearably clumsy. “That’s not, I _know_ , why’m I –”

“Ok, Tony. Calm down.”

“Please,” he says, and he doesn’t know what he’s asking for. “Don’t go,” he says, but it’s met with silence. “I’m sorry,” he gasps into the nothingness, “ _please._ ”

Silence, again.

“Please talk to me,” he mouths wildly, wishes he could see more than blurs and stabs of light, wishes he knew he wasn’t hallucinating this time, _wishes_. “I’m sorry,” he whispers wretchedly, “Please don’t go.”

After what feels like years, a sigh. A shift of chair legs off to his left.

“Ok,” they mumble. “You’re – it’s ok. You’re pretty doped. You’re with us, remember? Avengers. You’re – safe. You’re gonna be ok. You tried to kill yourself. That’s why you’re here.”  

Tony wants to say he knows, that's not what he means, he remembers, he remembers the bottles and bleeding and ropes and wanting.

“No, _no_ ,” he insists, “why, _please_ , please just, let me –”

“Jesus Christ, calm down, it wasn’t like – Steve found you, and –”

And then Tony’s heart is galloping in his throat. The machine picks up, the beeping climbs and stutters and roars in his ears. He’s only peripherally aware of anything, of the door opening off to his right and then another someone saying _this is why we had him restrained_ , because he’s not done, he’s not done and he hasn’t served and he hasn’t paid enough and he doesn’t know how much further he has to crawl and no one ever tells him, they just kick him until he screams and he’s going to have to do it all over again and _why can’t he just be gone –_

They lay their hands on him, again, because he’s not done being punished, because he’s tubes and a beating heart and there’s always more and he’ll never be listened to again, after this, and someone is saying, begging, weeping: _let me, let me, please let me, what do I have to do –_

\- - -

 

Logan palms a box of cigarettes, turns it over, works the cardboard until it’s wrinkled and limp.

“Shit, Stark,” he says, and sets it down, unopened.

 

\- - -

 

“Your turn.”

He comes out of a half-sleep to that, tries to hide the jerk that always startles him to waking now. He shivers; his back is open to the air. The blanket feels like it must be down around his hips. He’s sure they can see his marks.

He doesn’t dare try to pull it up.

“I fucking hate this,” a second someone says. “I changed it last time.”

He moves his mouth, opens and closes it like a fish and feels the feeding tube tickle at the back of his throat. He wants to ask for water, maybe, for another blanket because he’s cold and he doesn’t want anyone to look at him, wants them to take the tube out of his throat, please, but no one wants to hear him talk and that might be too much to ask, he always expects too much –

“It’s your shift.” It might be – he doesn’t remember the sounds of their voices well. It could be Danny. “Do you want Carol down here, because –”

“No, just – I got it.”

Someone pulls on the catheter line they’ve run between his legs.

There are footsteps behind him, heavy breathing, someone else’s shadow cast over his, and he shuts his eyes and tries to be nothing but a body.

“I can hear you,” Tony chokes, tears springing to his eyes. “I’m right here.”

There’s silence, then.

“I’ll get Strange,” one of them says. “I’ll – yeah.”

Someone would have been there once, with a cup of ice and a pair of sweats, would have said _nice of you to join us_ and _that’s what happens when you fly around in a tin can_ and _don’t ever do that again, Shellhead –_

Tony starts to cry, and he does it with his mouth clamped shut.

 

\- - -

\- - -

\- - -

 

Six hours of sleep, and he showers to get warm.

He drifts through the cafeteria, shield slung over his back, and swallows down the instant coffee shit, grunts hello at whoever is coming out of the cold, tries to smile at Danielle if Jessica is up with her – he thinks he read somewhere that smiling at children is important – and stuffs packets of protein powder into his pack. Checks his watch and he has 30 minutes to go, so he pulls out a giant stock pot, digs out dehydrated vegetables and cubes of stock and shreds of egg noodles out of the main pantry off the kitchen and puts the barest approximation of soup on to simmer on a timer. It’s down to the armory, then, lacing up his boots, snapping a rifle together and a quick check to see if he needs to repaint any of the spots on his newly-greyed-out shield.

After that, it’s just the miserable walk up the ramp and past the second set of blast doors and out into the cold.

He’s come to learn that the bunker is situated underneath a little peninsula jutting into Lake Ontario. Just north, a two-lane state highway snakes across the lake to two smaller islands, the northern-most containing the burnt-out remains of a campground. He hadn’t noticed, at first, passing through in the dark, but now he can’t miss the skeletons of trailers situated along the main path, the mostly intact welcome cabin that still bears banners that read _Welcome to Association Island._

Steve is a pack mule, mostly. That suits him fine.

He scavenges. He’s becoming an expert at siphoning grime from the tanks of cars with his mouth. Good days, he finds a gallon or so. Today, he folds his map back on itself and resolves to check the rest of the vehicles on the northern expanse of the bigger island before he sets off for the rendezvous point.He’ll drag the gas can with him; he only gets one exit and one entrance per day. Since his tantrum, the patrols have tapered off, but the lake is still, perplexingly, a hotbed of activity. He misses most of the gunships if he leaves at 4 in the morning and comes back some time around 7 at night, so that’s what he does.

Besides that, he runs the same mission every day.

The rendezvous point is off the interstate and Steve makes the hike, 15 miles and five hours to get there in the bitter cold. It takes him through miles of farmland, a bridge crossing that makes him nervous every time, past two of the regional mass graves next to I-81.

Today is April 15th, and 2 inches of snow have fallen by the time he’s made it to the town lines.

He’s not the one for the job. He’s sure one of the flyers was responsible for this before, Sam, maybe – who still hasn’t spoken to him – or Carol herself, but Steve is a warm body, a _soldier_ , and he’s painfully aware that he’s being punished, and so the task has fallen to him.

He thinks he might have teased Carol, once upon a time, about jumping through hoops.

He crosses from the east side of the interstate, makes sure to trample the snow in the same place he usually does, stays on the abutments of the highway until he can’t anymore, then climbs over two chain-link fences in quick succession, clings to the north edge of the field bordering the cemetery, and lets himself in the gate.

There’s no one here.

There never is; the keeper’s house is long-abandoned, and the farmhouse on the southern edge of the field has been bombed out, probably months ago. He trains one eye on the desolate waste of a forest around him and comes to his favorite copse of dead firs, hoists himself up beneath the foliage and perches on sap-covered branches and waits for their mystery contact that isn’t going to show.

He supposes he probably deserves a punishment detail. He suspects he’s less of a thorn in Carol’s side out here.

It’s easy to slip, and he indulges himself, more often than not, drifts into fits of melancholy, wanders, inevitably, to places of smoke and gunfire and blood, loses his way in the sound of Tony screaming himself hoarse, tries not to forget the way he used to look when he smirked, the way his eyes shined and the way he’d thumb at his collar and the easy elegance of his hands when he worked.

If Tony learns to smile again, Steve won't ever see it. 

A fawn that still hasn’t lost its spots stumbles out of the woods and onto the pavement some 200 meters from his perch. 

Steve leans his cheek against the dead bark, watches as it walks in circles for minutes, unsteady and slow, its legs on the edge of buckling, its head low to the ground like it doesn’t have the strength to hold it up.

It falls over onto its side, thrashes its legs, and starts to bleat.

Steve wonders that it’s managed to be born in this nightmare that should have been spring, that just as quickly, it’s managed to contract rabies and be driven slowly, torturously mad.

He remembers: Kindness. That’s what he’s doing now.

He fits the sight back onto the rifle, wraps his thighs around the branch, braces his feet against the main trunk, tightens it up against his shoulder, breathes –

A fine spatter of blood comes up over the snow where the fawn’s fallen.

He watches the slow fall of white that frosts it for the next hour and wonders if this is the closest thing there is to peace, now.

He wonders what nightmares Tony is having about him.

He wonders what nightmares he’ll have about Tony, tonight.

 

\- - -

\- - -

\- - -

 

The new realities of his life are explained to him.

Henry McCoy puts a dog at the foot of his bed and a tray of soup on the table beside it.

Tony doesn’t move.

“Ten milligrams twice a day once you come off the IV.” Stephen holds a bottle of something up. “You don’t have to remember. I just want you to know what we’re giving you. Someone will dispense it for you.”

 _So you don’t take the whole bottle,_ he doesn’t say.

“We’d like to sedate you for a few more days,” Hank tells him. “The alcohol poisoning set you back. You’re very weak,” he says, like it wasn’t painfully fucking clear.

He doesn’t remember the last time he spoke to Hank. SHRA Senate hearings, maybe. When he was a person. 

“You’re getting pneumonia,” Strange adds. 

“Your immune response is troubling, bottom line. You need to be healing more rapidly than you are. We’re worried.”

They’re worried.

“I apologize,” Stephen says. “I left instructions. They weren’t followed.” He turns the bottle over in his hands. Quieter, he says, “You were never supposed to wake up alone.”

The dog flops over onto its side and rests its head on his knee and opens its tiny puppy mouth in a sigh of a yawn.

Tony feels filthy.  

“The catheter can come out once you come out of sedation. Some of the bandages, too,” Hank says, holding up something that looks like a pager. “This is for you,” he says, though he sets it on the covers instead of pressing it into Tony’s hand. “If you need anything, if you’re in pain, if you’re distressed…please don’t hesitate,” he mumbles to the floor.

Tony doesn’t think he could close his hand around it if he tried.

He has to try harder, maybe.

“Are you in pain?” Stephen asks.

Yes, his back is still raw enough to stain the sheets every day, his fingertips throb so badly he could cry. What are left of his muscles ache like he’s been beaten every day for years; the brand on his neck feels like it’s melted through to his bones.

“It’s ok,” he hears himself say. “It’s normal.”

Hank looks at his hands, but Stephen looks at him like everyone looks at him on the rare occasions they can work up to it, like he’s a burden, blank and incomprehensible and pathetic, before he sweeps across the room to inject a syringe of something into the port on his IV bag anyway.

No one can look at him, so he doesn’t look, either, drops his gaze to his abraded wrists and watches whatever they’re drugging him with drip into the port on his wrist.  He tries to draw his legs up to his chest, but the pain that stabs up through his spine is unbearable, so he settles for curling his hand into a loose fist.

“Do you have questions?” Stephen asks, all business and professionalism and _decency_. “I’m going to put you out for a few days.”

He should have questions. The him he used to be would have, would have asked about the bunker they’re in and how long until he gets to kill the fuck that did this to him, would’ve smirked and sauntered down the hallway on his own goddamned legs.

He wouldn’t have asked. He’d have demanded, once. Clothes. Morphine.

Tony asks, “Where’s Steve?” and doesn’t look at Stephen’s face. 

Stephen is silent for a long time. “Would you like him to be here?” he asks, finally, with something in his voice that Tony can’t abide. 

Tony dares to look at him and doesn’t expect to get stuck, means to look away and can’t, because he’s fixated on the shape of Stephen’s mouth and the expression the question has left him with.

Perhaps he isn’t supposed to ask about that. Tony is maybe the one that drove him away.

That’s fine. Steve should have left, he should never have to look at Tony again, and Tony tips his chin to his chest and curls as tight as he’ll go and feels his eyes burning with tears and possibly shame, wonders what fucking right he has to ask for anything at all, because they’ve gone their ways, they were done a lifetime ago when Tony made the decision to be scum and Steve –

“No,” he says, and it comes out as a miserable mewl, “I didn’t, please – don’t tell him I asked.”

Hank and Stephen share a look in the corner of his peripheral vision, but Tony doesn’t want to see what they’re thinking about him. He wants to say _go_ , wants them to leave, can’t bear to have onlookers any longer, wants to say _take the dog with you_ but doesn’t. Stephen raises his hands, draws tiny threads of color out of nothing, uses his magic to still the quaking in his chest. Tony keeps his eyes open and blank until he can’t anymore, loses the unbearable pain of existing somewhere between the hum of the machine and the tiny furry heartbeat against his side…

He spends his last conscious moments wishing he had asked Veranke to erase his memory when he had the chance to be a coward.

 

\- - -

 

“I want you to be ok,” Carol says, today, after an eternity of looking.

It’s more than the rest of them do for him, talking. He’s sure it’s more than he’s supposed to have.

Normally she’s crying; every time he stops sleeping long enough to open his eyes, she’s crying again. Even now, her face is blotchy. She seems to come just to watch, wastes hours at a time looking at him being terrible and useless and savaged.

She says, “I’m sorry we didn’t take care of you.” 

He tries to remember what she looked like without dark circles under her eyes.

He wants to say he’s sorry. _I’ll do it right next time_. He knew how to be efficient, once. He never used to be sloppy. He’s wearing her thin.

He knows he’s a waste.

“You should have resources,” she says. “You should –” She bites it off, clutches her fingers in her hair and sucks in a deep-lunged sigh. “I’m sorry,” she whispers again.

He knows she has places to be. She has a mess of a world to navigate, probably. She has people to avenge.

“Just, why didn’t you talk to me,” she says unevenly. “You can talk to me,” she whispers. “I’m here for you.”

He knows what she means. They did this to Carol, a long time ago. He remembers Marcus. He remembers not saying anything that should have been said, remembers standing next to Steve after she got her memories back and watching her yell at them for being terrible human beings. 

He thinks they were something like family, once, and they let that happen to her. 

He thinks it's probably only right that they let this happen to him. 

Tony says, “I was trying to do you a favor.”

Her breathing sounds like crying, but he can’t be sure.

“Do you know how many people I’ve watched die,” she bursts, and yeah, she’s crying again. “I know,” she wails, “I know, we abandoned you, I’m sorry, I don’t have a right to be mad, I’m not mad, I just, _Tony._ ”

Tony thinks you probably can’t abandon trash.

“I’m sorry,” she says again. “I want you to be ok,” she cries. “It’s gonna be better, it’s, you have people who love you,” she says.

“Who do I have,” he says dully.

“ _Me_ ,” she wails. “You have me.”

He wishes she’d realize she’s talking to someone who no longer exists. 

“Can you leave,” Tony says to the wall.

 

\- - -

 

Stephen always starts with incantations instead of hellos.

He dutifully lifts Tony’s limbs with his scarred surgeon’s hands, gingerly peels the bandages off, does his best to afford him all the anonymity they both know Tony can’t have anymore with silence and averted glances. He swabs and cleans and assesses how damaged he is, meticulous, as he’s always been, indifferent and coldly professional.

Today Stephen conjures a lens between his outstretched hands so he can see the stitches he’s laid into Tony’s tissue. Today Stephen peels the bandage off of his neck, so everyone will be able to see where K’arr’n has burned his name into Tony’s skin. Today he lifts up Tony’s gown to palpate his stomach. Today he asks Tony to open so he can look at the places he’s chewed through his own mouth. Today he snaps on gloves and looks at Tony’s abused mess of a crotch to see if the bruising has resolved at all.

Tony complies and doesn’t make a fucking sound.

He waits for pain, for the hands checking his ribs to slide up into a pinch that makes him scream, waits to be pulled and twisted and cut, waits for Stephen’s gloved fingers to slide past his tailbone and slip into his body and -

Tony forgets to breathe and presses his lips together and makes his eyes go lax and unfocused and does his best to leave.

The rest of them shoulder the idle hours, the times when Tony is left to his bruises and pain and humiliation and someone sits in the chair and shifts uncomfortably. There’s only one of them, ever. There’s no clock in the room, but he suspects it’s every four hours that they switch. They all wear their costumes. They’re all armed.

Steve is never among them, nor is Luke Cage.

He’s a list of chores, a body kept living more out of propriety than anything else, an inconvenience to a roster of harried taskmasters. They’re clever enough about smiling, now, even though Tony knows each of them counts the minutes until they’re done, knows they think he’s foul when they change the bandages with their fingertips and see his weeping cuts and swollen sores, knows no one wants to hold him around the waist while he tries to stop shaking long enough to piss into the toilet.

None of them know what to say, so they don’t, nothing beyond _hi_ and _Stark_ and _go back to sleep_.

They don’t need to; it’s abundantly clear. He’s a waste of other people’s energy. He spends every second of every day knowing it.

He reminds himself: this is a punishment.

Steve doesn’t want him to die yet, so he’ll live.

He’ll be this voiceless stain of a thing until someone agrees to put him down.

 

\- - -

\- - -

\- - -

 

They sit around a coffee table to do their meetings, like it’s casual and not the end of the world.

“They’re starving,” Stephen is saying. He runs a hand over his neck – a nervous gesture, Steve has noticed – and sinks into one of the sofas. He’s acquired a branching red scar in his mysterious absence: oddly delicate, but angry and bright, a thin pattern that runs down his neck and peeks out of his shirtsleeve around his wrist. “They were getting supplies in through the tunnels until they collapsed the superstructure – I have no idea, there’s no sea traffic and the barrier is still up, I _know_ , Carol – but it’s just a waiting game now. The Skrulls won’t touch them; they’re sitting on enough WMDs to make the planet unusable for centuries.” 

 _We should be grateful they haven’t_ , he doesn’t say.

Steve may as well be eavesdropping for all the input he’s allowed in this.

They’re sifting through the tidbits Stephen’s brought back from wherever he was. He can’t fly, but he can still teleport every few days if he saves his magic. Yesterday was Europe, about how there’s a crater where Moscow used to be and how there are four operational Doombots for every human survivor crawling around just outside Doomstadt’s walls. The day before that was some sort of water-borne parasite that’s catching on in what’s left of South America and wildfires in what used to be Utah. Steve isn’t terribly surprised to hear Israel’s putting them all to shame; IDF has always run a tight ship.

His capacity for surprise is almost nonexistent, anyway, now.

Carol opens her mouth.

“Carol, there’s no point; that doesn’t mean it’s safe,” Stephen says, and Steve wonders, briefly, when they developed that level of intimacy, when they first began to learn each other’s thoughts from the barest of cues. “The nearest breach in the barrier is in Manitoba; they probably know about it by now anyway. That’s thousands of miles away, and even if we could, there isn’t a _point_. They have no _food_. They’ll be overrun before the week’s out.”

Something like resignation flickers over Carol’s face, and she moves on, like all of them but him have learned to do, apparently.

“Wakanda,” she says.

“To the best of my knowledge?” Stephen sighs. “A puppet state. The –”

“T’Challa would never,” Carol says. 

“They tortured Ororo to death in front of him in the second wave,” Stephen says dully. “Their stunt with the ship cost them dearly. And it isn’t T’Challa. T’Challa is probably dead or a prisoner on the Peak. One of the other sects is responsible for the exchange. It seems the Skrulls are just as interested in vibranium as everyone else.”

Carol is still engrossed with her pad, though she’s stopped writing.  

“There is no alliance to be had,” Stephen says quietly. “It was a desperate power play; they’re going into camps just like everyone else.”

Maria just rests her head in her hands like she’s unbearably weary of doing this every day with nothing to show for it.

“Atlantis, then,” Carol says.   

Stephen looks intensely uncomfortable and sips his coffee.

“Atlantis is lost,” he says, perfectly calmly.

Each and every one of them sits up straighter at that.

“What does that mean?” Carol asks.

Stephen sighs. “It means Namor and his people are dead.”

“When,” Carol demands, “how, what the _fuck_ is going on, we didn’t even get word –”

“A few weeks ago,” Stephen says.

“ _How._ ”

Stephen shrugs. “No signs of a struggle. Bio-EMP. Blood without wounds.”  

“They could have been poisoned,” Maria throws out. “Nerve gas. Modified, bound to water molecules.”

“Hydra had something like that,” Steve points out, and the glare Carol sends him is enough to make him sigh and press his eyes shut and keep the rest to himself.

“Does that conclude our tour of what used to be the EU?” Carol asks with a darkness Steve wishes she could have been spared.

Stephen conjures a ball of light between his hand that pulses and sputters before it expands to display a sinewy rendering of the globe that looks smoldering and gouged, lines and dots and starbursts of dark green winding over the face of almost every landmass other than Antarctica.

“This is speculation and projection,” Stephen notes. “They’ve reconfigured most of the satellites, and Mossad hasn’t been able to get in.”

There was a time Tony could have done that, Steve thinks. There was a time Tony could do anything.

“China concerns me,” Stephen continues. “Japan was a blow, but these areas here…” – several regions along China’s east coast sparkle with green – “represent repurposed human infrastructure. Beijing alone has 17 operational factories as of March 7th. Mossad couldn’t give me anything more recent.”

“We knew this would happen,” Maria points out.

“Well, they’re churning out Starktech,” Stephen says dully.  “New Starktech, according to Mossad.”

The clock ticks away for a moment, unbearably loud in the sudden silence, before everyone opens their mouths at once.

It’s Maria who says it. “We need to debrief him.”

Steve is ready to scream.

Steve, with great effort and deliberacy, shuts his mouth.

“We should have, weeks ago,” Carol nods slowly. “I’ve been thinking about it.”

Steve looks desperately to Stephen for some kind of backup, but Stephen is frowning and canting his head in the barest of nods.

“You think he built for them,” Steve says to his hands.

He wonders if it was before or after they pulled his fingernails out.

“I think there’s a possibility he designed for them, yes.”

“Tony didn’t keep anything he designed on the S.H.I.E.L.D. mainframe,” Maria says carefully. “But it’s not out of the question, the Skrulls could have had access to whatever they wanted, even before the invasion, if he was –”

 _If he was fucking a Skrull that looked like you_ , she doesn’t finish.

“People always want him to build,” Steve mumbles.

“He was a valuable captive,” Stephen points out. “He could have been a data mine for years if they’d wanted –”

“Stop,” Steve says quietly, and it takes no time at all for the warm flush of shame to reach his cheeks. He thinks he used to have a stomach for this sort of thing.

He’s so horrendously transparent.

“We don’t know what they wanted from him,” Carol points out. Quieter, she says, “We don’t even know if they interrogated him.”

It’s a testament to the rumor mill, maybe, that no one opens their mouth to dispute that.

“It’s an oversight we’re long overdue to investigate,” Stephen says to his hands.  

“No,” Steve says.

“Steve, anything to add?” Carol says darkly.

Steve takes a breath, because that’s what he’s doing now.

“You can’t treat him like he’s an asset,” he says. “He’s not a – _source_ , it’s needlessly cruel –”

“The last thing anyone wants is to be cruel to Tony,” Stephen says, “I assure you –”

“He is an asset,” Carol says flatly.

Stephen bows his head.

“Well, not to be a dick,” Maria says, “but, yeah.”

Steve thinks maybe he should just leave.

“What if he has information that could drive them away?” Stephen says quietly.

They’re right, they’re right and he’s a coward and he’d do it in an instant if it were anyone else. 

“You can’t break into his mind,” he says desperately into his hands. “It’s a violation.”

“He spent months in Skrull High Command,” Maria says. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed? But we don’t have a whole lot in our fucking kit bag, Steve.”

“Don’t make him your last resort,” Steve says, and his voice is dangerously close to breaking.  

“Do you have an alternative? We have very little with which to wage war,” Stephen says.

“Is that the priority now,” Steve says under his breath.

“No,” Stephen says sharply. “The priority is survival. Do you think anyone in this room thinks a victory is any more than a pipe dream, now? Think of what we could learn from an uncompromised perspective. We might learn things he doesn’t even know he _knows –”_

“That’s not your decision,” Steve cuts in. 

Stephen looks to Carol, and then back to Steve.

“I can’t do it without his consent,” Stephen says.

“No,” Steve says, quietly, “you damn well can’t.”

“It’s Tony’s decision,” Carol says.

Something terrible and slicing rises up in his chest.

“He’s gonna say yes,” he croaks. _He’s too broken not to_ , he doesn’t say.

They all look at him like he’s being ridiculous, and he knows: he’s going to sit here and let this happen.

 _I wish I’d never met you_ , Tony had said.

Doesn’t he fucking deserve every inch of it.

 

\- - -

\- - -

\- - -

 

When he can stand on his own, he’s led up and down the corridors, paraded before stark cinderblock walls and what seem to be miles and miles of empty rooms that gape like dark mouths off the main corridor. It’s more difficult than it was before; there’s been a dull ache in his gut that’s just now started to leave him. Hank tells him he’s had his stomach pumped.

Hank tells him a lot of things.  

Hank tells him that he’s lost 10 percent of his muscle mass. That he aspirated water when someone held him under a shower trying to get him warm again. His vitamin B levels are way down. He’s more than mildly anemic. _Walking is a good sign. We can consider moving you to a real room when your stamina is up. How’s your cough? How are your ribs? Is this ok? That’s good, you’re doing well._

There is talk of calories and weight gain. The smell of food is enough to make him retch, most days. They stop bringing him soup and start bringing him whatever they’ve scrounged up, Jell-O and juice shit with electrolytes in it and crackers that are probably years old and sometimes canned fruit with plastic forks and no knives. He doesn’t know how to say he’s not hungry, but the threat of the feeding tube is enough, so he chokes it down and wills his stomach to settle and usually throws it back up anyway.

“Strange thinks this could be re-feeding syndrome,” Hank tells him while he clutches at the toilet bowl and his gown falls open over his spine and he re-bruises his ribs. “You’re not getting what you need, ok, just - ok." Hank strokes over his back as he retches with a massive paw. "You should really be on some kind of supplement,” Hank says. "You can't keep anything down, and if this continues you may well literally starve to death." 

Tony thinks he’s going to sob if he thinks about paste.

It should be hysterically funny. They’re scrambling for solutions now. They’re bending over backwards so they don’t have to come in and find him opened up from wrist to neck.

“We’ll try soup again,” Hank says, at the look on Tony’s face.

Later, he brings Tony medical records, pages and pages of glossy scans with modifications penned in to the margins on some of the sheets. He says _goals_ and _baseline_ and takes vials of Tony’s blood. 

Tony stares at the scans Hank has given him to look at, at the strong wrap of muscle laid over every inch of this stranger’s body, the limbs that could bear armor and save people and build extraordinary things.

 _Stark, Tony, 12-01-2008,_ the bottom of the page reads.

 

\- - -

 

Stephen doesn’t do his spells today.

Instead, he sits, drags a chair to Tony’s bedside, and sinks. He slides a pair of jeans and a sweater onto Tony’s bedside table.

“Namor is dead,” he says.

Stephen can’t possibly think Tony has the capacity for emotion any longer.

“I recovered his gem,” Stephen says, like it’s nothing. “The rest…”

The rest.

It makes his eyes sting and sets his heart hammering wildly, the unspoken implication. They’re right, of course. Stephen is right. He never could have held out, how ridiculous to think that he had any strength to spare for anyone but himself.

It’s easier not to be lied to, he decides. This is what he’ll tell himself. Pretense is wasted on him. He welcomes this. They should never have trusted him. He tries on a nod. Yes, he’s a liability. He was always going to be a liability. It’s easier for everyone.

“You would have done a debrief,” Stephen says quietly, “if circumstances were different. You had a great deal of tactical information.”

Tony doesn’t know what he’s supposed to say.

 _I tried_.

“I want to ask you something,” Stephen says. “The rest of the gems are safe,” he says, as if it’s any kind of consolation at all, “That’s why I left. I don’t – I believe yours is safe, as well. I’m not insinuating you gave it up.” He looks at his hands. “However…all of us agree. There is a great deal you could have told them.”

Tony thinks his face is wet.

“No one blames you,” Stephen says, and he’s shifting, now. “This isn’t an accusation, we simply…” He looks at his hands for guidance. “We need to know,” he mumbles.

Tony doesn’t know how he’s supposed to say he would have done anything to make it stop.

“What should I say?” Tony asks.

“I’m asking for your permission,” Stephen says. “I’d like to investigate.” 

“Yes,” Tony says dully.

“You don’t know what you’re saying yes to.”

“I talked,” Tony gulps, and he blinks and blinks and blinks. “I talked. I don’t remember what he wanted. I don’t know what I said.”

It isn’t a lie. He remembers screaming. He remembers trying to remember what to cling to.

Stephen sits for a minute, and Tony has the distinct impression he’s being a burden again.

“There is a way,” Stephen says. “It’s – jarring. I won’t start anything without your consent.”

He could have said _agreement_ or _approval,_ but Stephen doesn’t throw his words around. It’s why no one is looking at him, it’s why no one can look at him like he was ever anything more than this, it’s –

“Tony,” Stephen says softly.

“Yes,” his mouth says, while he buries his face in his pillow and tries to disguise the fact that he’s halfway to hysterics again. He doesn’t know if there will ever be a time or a place or a person to tell: _this_ isunbearable. He preferred the cruelty without the sham, preferred the violence to this obligatory pity they’ve consigned him to, tries to steady his breathing while Stephen hovers like he _cares_ and the terror stretches on forever when he closes his eyes, will he feel it all again, will it be the same, how long until they learn about the way he begged, the way he offered –

“You need to be sure. No one is forcing you.”

No one is forcing him.

(There was never any way they saved him out of kindness, after all he’s done.)

 _Don’t make me_ , is all he can think.

“I want you to wipe my memory,” Tony bursts, already sorry. He knows he should be stronger than this, but there’s terror clawing its way up in his chest and he can’t, he can’t, he can’t (he has to) –

“Tony,” Stephen starts.

“I’ll do whatever you want me to do,” his mouth scrapes, because this is the least he can do for the thousand and one ways he’s fucked everyone over. “Just, please, can you –”

Stephen’s breathing slows and quiets, and Tony already knows he’s been refused.

“This is not a transaction,” Stephen murmurs.

“Ok,” Tony whispers.

“Tony –”

“It’s ok,” he whispers, more to himself than to Stephen. “It’s ok.”

He gets it, he gets it, he gets it. He’s not allowed mercy anymore. He’ll make do with shame.

 

\- - -

\- - -

\- - -

 

There are three observation rooms tucked away in the very back of the medical wing, wide swaths of double-paned reflective glass that are just shy of Steve’s eye level.

“We should let him know we’re here,” Steve insists, as Stephen slices his palm open and daubs his blood on the floor in whorls and lines.

Hank leads Tony in by the elbow, and Steve tries not to look at his body, but –

He looks awful.

He hunches and shivers, and he’s not wearing anything but scrubs and a shitty grey sweater carefully tucked up to his elbows, out of the way of the ports taped to his arm. He doesn’t have socks. They didn’t give him socks, and Steve can’t get them for him, and so now he just won’t have them, and his feet are bruised and sinewy and pale.

Tony lowers himself down painfully slowly and lies, wincing, in the middle of Stephen’s pentagram.

“This is cruel,” Steve says.

Carol doesn’t say anything.

Stephen kneels at Tony’s head, tilts his face up with his long, elegant fingers, and Tony’s head jerks and he blinks wildly and his eyes glaze over beneath their swollen purple lids at the touch.

“Is this going to hurt him?” Steve asks, and his voice is shaking.

“I don’t know,” Carol says. 

Stephen tells Tony to extend his arms, and he does, without a word of protest. His sweater falls over the hollow of his stomach, the scant cage of his ribs. He holds his feet like he’s dead. Steve can see all of his veins. Can see the bandages dotted with blood as he turns the soft flesh of his arms out and trembles.  

Tony tilts his head as far as he can toward the window and blinks tears out of his terrified blue eyes and he’s –

He’s looking right at Steve.

 _Run_ , Steve thinks.

“Don’t wait for me,” Steve chokes, and turns to go.

He’s very firmly reseated by Carol’s hand on his shoulder.

“I don’t want to watch this, either,” she says, “but we need to be here, if…”

If something goes wrong. They’ve talked it to death already.

He looks back, but Tony is looking at the ceiling while tears run down the side of his face.  

He’ll stand here while Tony cries because he should have done something to prevent this, he’ll stand here with a straight fucking face while Tony relives all the should haves that no one helped him with. Tony’s hands go limp at his sides and Steve stares straight ahead like he can’t see (he’s such a heel). Carol shifts infinitesimally closer, and Stephen is murmuring in languages Steve’s never head before and the chalk is sparking on the floor and the air is full of color until it isn’t color, anymore, it’s white, and –

 

\- - -

\- - -

\- - -

 

Tony kneels on the floor.

It’s mid-morning. Late, maybe. K’arr’n got rid of the clock, so each day stretches, unending, into the next. The sky gets brightest right after the first set of drones fire.

“Tony,” Stephen says.

Tony holds up his timorous hands, and the skin on his arms – thick, and corded with muscle that strains against the brushed silver of the cuffs – is perfectly unmarred.

The ground shakes, and a formation of them fly by, beyond, just outside the balcony doors, and three of the panes of glass shatter and fall in a fine spray.

“You’re doing that,” Stephen says, and Tony shivers, wishes he had a cloak, wishes he had clothes. “It’s a function of your subconscious. Do you know who I am, Tony?” He raises his hands and sinks down in a crouch. His cloak billows red about him like spun blood.

Someone shouts in Skrull. It rings through the wall, and Tony’s chains scrape along the footboard as he reaches up to clutch at his head.

“What’s going on,” Stephen says, and reaches for him, and what is he doing, doesn’t he know that he has to leave, K’arr’n can’t _see_ him here, he has to leave, he can’t be here, _he can’t_ –

There is a tremendous groaning of metal behind him.

Stephen rears back just as the ground rocks again, as the tower shudders all the way through her I-beams, and he can’t look, he can’t, and the doorknob is turning and his heart is racing and he isn’t _ready –_

 

He’s in the drawing room, or what used to be the drawing room.

They used to have parties here.

“Is this better?” Stephen asks, and Tony looks down at himself. There’s mud on his hands, crusted and smeared and faintly red –

No, that’s blood.

“I need you to focus,” Stephen says, “I can’t –

“Come here,” K’arr’n says.

He shifts in the armchair and smiles Steve’s smile. The shield is resting on its face at his feet, one of the leather straps torn out of the housing entirely, a dark slick of blood pooling in the middle.

Tony has no conscious thought that prompts him to lower himself like a cat onto the floor, no flicker of decisiveness, just blank terror and rote submission that stay with him as he crawls, as his hands brush the detritus of blown-in leaves and splintered wood and –

“Tony,” Stephen says, and he’s at his side, he’s trying to hold him back with words. “You don’t have to show me this,” he says, hushed, “this is only as real as you make it, Tony, _listen to me –”_

 _Who’s Tony_ , Tony thinks.

The leaves blow in through the cathedral windows as the ceiling starts to cave in.

“Dammit,” Stephen says –

 

“Tony,” Ty says, and slinks around to stand behind him, leans in to whisper in Tony’s ear like a snake. “It’s not like we haven’t met. “Tiberius.” _Ty_. Do I need to remind you?”

His hand tightens on Tony’s shoulder and –

 

The air smells like powder, grit in his nose. His lungs feel shot full of needles.

His heart is bleeding, he remembers. 

“Tony,” Stephen says, out of the dark.

He can’t do it.

There are too many pieces; he doesn’t have the material he needs, not really, it’s one desperate gambit after another, what the fuck kind of plan was this, anyway, his heart is going to stop beating any day and he’s going to die here, he’s going to die, he’s going to die –

“Are you going to let them beat you?” Yinsen asks him.

Tony turns something over in his hands, but the light is bad, he can only feel it, heavy and smooth and cold under his fingers, can only run his fingers over the ridges and the seams and feel the thing groaning behind him –

The floor falls out from under his feet – 

 

“Keep us here,” Stephen says. “Focus on this.”

Maya’s blood gleams where it’s smeared across the cell floor.

“Why are we here,” Stephen says.

“It’s where I live,” Tony says.

“Do you know who you are,” Stephen asks patiently. “Do you remember?”

Tony’s hand comes up to his neck.

“I’m a slave," he says. His fingers come away wet with blood and plasma.

Footsteps, down the hall, boots, and the floor trembles against his bare flank. He looks around, but there’s nowhere to go, there’s nothing he can do and the barrier comes down and the lights shudder off and –

 

She shouldn’t be here.

She’s in that dress, the red one, the one she bought in Tokyo. She bares an ankle. She’s in lovely black stilettos.

“Ru,” Tony says.

Rumiko doesn’t smile at him, because he’s garbage.

Tony flicks his glance up at Stephen. It’s all he can manage. “Don’t let her watch this,” he mumbles.

“This is your subconscious,” Stephen says. “What do you think is going to happen?”

A knock, on the bedroom door.

“I need to see what you’re running from,” Stephen says, but the room is already shaking to pieces around them.

Tony curls his knees to his chest and covers his ears, and then there’s a tremendous crash behind him–

 

Stephen crouches in the snowbank opposite him, his cloak billowing out over the balcony railing.  

He can't feel his feet. He’s lain here for hours. He tries to reach an arm out to cover himself with more snow, but he’s cold and he can’t move his limbs.

He’s almost there. It won’t be long.

Please don’t let it be long.

There’s a green hand on the balcony door and it’s creaking open and his blood feels like sludge in his veins and –

“This isn’t working,” Stephen says, and the wind picks up and the snow roars like a demon and everything is blinding white –

 

Tony looks at his hands.

There’s blood –  

Stephen kicks the shield away with a clang.

Stephen comes closer as the floor shifts under his feet, as the ballroom tile falls away at the corners of the room, as the plaster on the walls fractures and collapses under its own weight. He sinks to his knees, puts himself on Tony’s level. “I don’t want to dig through your memories,” he murmurs. “You’re leaving me very little choice.”

The sound of metal rending from itself grinds through his skull, and the both of them are cast in shadow.

“Tony,” Stephen says, alarmed. “You need to help me. This level of your subconscious is too fractured for me to navigate; you need to –”

He turns, and the armor is cracking, splitting along the seams before it starts to melt into a red-gold slick that pools around his bare legs.  

Tony presses a hand into it and it creeps up his arm.

The red of it slides over his skin, and he freezes, stiffens, as it runs over him, please make it stop, he shouldn’t have touched it, he knows, he did this to himself, and when he can bear to open his eyes it’s drying, it’s crusting over into a shining shell and –

“Get it off,” he’s whimpering, “please get it off, please –”

“I need to,” Stephen whispers. “I have to see what happened.”

Terribly gently, Stephen reaches with his elegant fingers and puts his hands on Tony’s face.

His whole body _jolts,_ and then they –  

 

                                               

“Tell me,” K’arr’n says, and –

and Stephen is trying to brace, he’s trying to steady them both and build up his walls (Tony doesn’t get any walls) and K’arr’n drops their fingernail onto his tray and he’s such a coward, it’s spilling out of his mouth and that’s what he is, he’s never been able to control himself and Steve would die before he gave anything up, and the part of him that’s Stephen is stone-silent, and maybe he was supposed to die instead of caving –

 

 

four one oh seven two four seven five oh nine five nine, that’s what Nat said, (what if he got it wrong) pointed her pistol at his brain and hissed coordinates, four one oh seven two four seven five oh nine five nine, he didn’t lie, he didn’t, god please let her understand, he didn’t _lie_ , oh god oh god oh god she’s, Maya’s bleeding and her eyes are terrified and he can’t reach to even hold her together and she’s bleeding she’s bleeding _she’s bleeding_ –

(K’arr’n is going to beat you if you vomit, don’t, don’t, don’t–)

 

 

 

He says _yes_ , he says _how do you want me_ , it won’t be anything he hasn’t done before, it’s not anything because he’s not a person, he’s just a body that agreed to this because he’s lower than shit and sex is sex and pain is pain and K’arr’n is rolling him over and fucking his fingers into him and what does it matter, no one is coming for him, he's a whore, he's already loved this, he took a Skrull to bed, he's already spread his legs and moaned and he can lie there like he’s dead all he wants but he asked for this, he did, he always wants things he can’t have and he wanted this, he offered, he chose, and if he looks at him right he looks kind and maybe he won’t hit him with his belt and maybe he’ll be merciful and rape him to death and maybe he can pretend it’s Steve forcing his way inside him and pinching him until he screams and it’s better if it’s Steve, Steve would –

K’arr’n says, “that’s good, make noise.”

Stephen is the one screaming, maybe –

 

 

 

 

“Trial forty three,” K’arr’n says, and the node goes behind his ear and there’s nothing to look at, where does he look, he can’t close his eyes and they put their fingers on his face and look in his mouth and raise his eyelids and shine lights in his eyes and they punch it into his neck and he can’t breathe and there are spots in his eyes and he tries to brace for –

they shock him and

they shock him and

they shock him and

angry words, angry and K’arr’n backs one of them into a corner and Tony’s eyes roll back in his head and he shivers and everything is sharp and it’s crawling in his brain and the straps are unbearable and K’arr’n is undoing them and he’s falling, he’s falling, and the arms that catch him are pale and not green and Steve smiles and scoops him up and his legs bump against his hip like a dead thing and –

 

 

 

 

 

“We’ve had a miscommunication,” K’arr’n says.

what does he say, what does he say, he’s not supposed to think anymore, what does he say, what does he want, idiot, he never should have tried, idiot, he never, why did he think –

“Kneel,” K’arr’n says, “head down, arms out, bow, _DO IT, TONY_ –”

drops, he is, he’s doing it, stretches himself out, bows and shivers because it’s in his bones now and he hasn’t been good and he shouldn’t have tried and the first blow lands and he doesn’t shriek like he might have once, doesn’t yell when K’arr’n kicks him in the head because he’s pissed himself in fear, he knows what he is, it’s burned into his neck, cattle, obedient pulp, K’arr’n’s–

“I decide,” he says, “I decide how you live and if you die, I make your decisions, you don’t get to kill yourself, you’re an investment, do you understand, you ask me to kill you and _I decide_ –”

it will stop soon, it will stop when K’arr’n is down to bone and the guards pull him off, it will stop when he says the right thing, you’re right, I’m sorry, I’m yours, forgive me, I’m yours, I am a slave, _Steve_ –

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He’s in Carol’s arms.

“–not planned,” he catches, dimly, “I couldn’t, I – _Carol_ –”

His body feels like it’s humming, and his skin sears where Stephen’s had his hands on his temples. There’s a bowl filled with something like bile next to Carol’s hip. He doesn’t remember throwing it up. She shouldn’t be holding him; he’s filthy and he’s ruining her shirt, but somehow he’s slung over her lap and sagging in her arms.

She’s terrifyingly silent, and it means he can hear every one of the broken gasps scraping out of his own throat. “Sedate me,” Tony chokes, and he retches before he knows it’s happening, all over Carol’s lap, and he’s sorry, and Carol’s hand hovers over his shoulder blades like she hates this, she hates touching him, but there he is, obligation.

Stephen is lurching where he sits in Tony’s peripheral vision.

Tony slides out of Carol’s grip, like it’s an accident and not cowardice, lets himself collapse in a heap on the floor and clings to the edge of the basin, feels his heart stuttering. He rocks until the ground is solid and his bones scream from the effort of it and Beast is there with a hand on his back telling him, “Breathe, you’re ok, this is Xanax, you’re gonna be ok, you’re gonna be fine _–”_

He looks at the window while Beast lifts his arm to slip a needle into his port, but Steve’s not supervising anymore.

He becomes dimly aware that he’s not the only one gasping for air.

“Please forgive me,” Stephen gasps, somewhere off to his left, and when Tony drags his eyes up from the ground, he’s sobbing.            

 

\- - -

\- - -

\- - -

 

He blows off his shift.

He stands in the shower long enough for the heater to kick off twice. He’d left around the time Tony started to scream, and Carol hadn’t stopped him.

He tells himself he doesn’t care how it went.

He doesn’t know how to vent anymore. They used to spar, they had that, and now all he can do is carry it with him while it compresses in his chest. He scrawls on the edges of maps, sometimes, feeling more like a child than an artist, and blots it out anyway when he finds he’s drawn Tony as he used to be, cocksure and brilliant and strong. With the patrolling, he’s bone-tired at the end of every day, but his thoughts are restless, and not even the cold can do much to erase the knowledge that he gets to walk while Tony lies in the hospital wing, terrified and savaged.

He is a soldier, and he is perfect, and he is useless in all the ways that have ever mattered.

He braces one arm on the freezing wall and wraps his disgusting fingers around his cock and thinks about Sharon.

He misses her so much it aches. She would say he was being a coward, and then she’d kiss him and wrap her legs around his hips, and god, he misses that, having someone to ground him, to pull him out of the ugliness his thoughts stray to, someone to push back and smirk and say _don’t be a crotchety old man, winghead –_  

He comes with a miserable wrung-out sigh, thinking about what it would have been like to be Tony’s lover.

He’s never had the privilege, and he never will.

 

\- - -

 

Steve knocks twice. “Carol.”

There’s a light on, filtering under the crack in the doorway. It’s one of the conference rooms, but she’s adopted it as some sort of den; it’s where she goes when she isn’t sleeping, and it’s early, still. She might be busy, though. He’s no longer sure he’ll be a welcome interruption.

He’s shifting and trying to decide whether he should just go down to medical to find Hank or Strange when he hears an aborted sob from inside.

She’s crying again.

His hand hovers on the door. He knows how much she hates falling apart, hates it more in front of him, probably.

Or maybe she doesn’t. Maybe she’s better than he is. God knows he wouldn’t say no to a shoulder to cry on.

He sighs and levers the door open.

His eyes don’t make sense of what he sees for a minute. But then he realizes what he’s looking at, a bare expanse of creamy skin, a curtain of blonde hair; that Carol is naked, one of the standard army-green blankets fallen down around her hips. She’s sitting cross-legged on the floor, and there’s another blanket draped over the couch behind her and a well-muscled man with a shock of grey hair mixed into brown with his tanned limbs jumbled into hers and it’s not her that’s sobbing, it’s –

It’s Strange. Stephen, half-fallen, half-sitting in her lap, also naked, gripping her arm so tightly his hands tremble while Carol tangles her fingers in his hair and his body shakes with some unbearable pain.

Carol’s head snaps up as the door clicks open softly, and her face goes from anguish to confusion to ire so quickly it makes Steve’s head spin. 

“Sorry, I’m sorry,” he gasps, and his feet carry him out, he practically rushes back down the hallway, because they’re sleeping together, Carol and Strange, of course they are, it’s – Steve doesn’t think he’s ever seen Strange cry, has _anyone_ ever seen him cry? It would have been better if he’d walked in and caught them screwing, this is a thousand times more intimate, _god_ , _boundaries_ , she’d said, he doesn’t have them, he shouldn’t have seen that, she would have told him if he was supposed to know, _don’t begrudge her this just because you’re lonely and miserable –_

“Steve,” a gravelly voice calls out to him.

Steve keeps walking. “It’s none of my business,” he says, “I’m sorry.”

“ _Steve_ ,” Stephen says again, and when Steve turns, he’s wrapped in a blanket standing in his bare feet. Carol isn’t behind him.

“Is everything ok,” Steve asks, though he doesn’t know why he bothers. Of course it isn’t. The Sorcerer Supreme is going to pieces in a dark room while the world burns, and everything is never going to be ok again –

“He’s sleeping,” Strange says raggedly.

Steve opens his mouth to say he wasn’t asking about Tony, but –

“He’s – I need to speak with you,” Stephen says.

“Do we have to do this right now?” Steve asks, looking at the ceiling.

“Yes,” Stephen says, and sucks in a shaky breath, the weight of the world in the fine lines around his eyes. “That’s the problem, it’s always later with you.”

“That’s not true,” Steve says weakly, but there’s nothing he can honestly put behind it. “Don’t you –”

“I didn’t understand the rift between you,” Stephen cuts in, his eyes dull and dark and haunted, and apparently they’re talking about this, now. “I didn’t understand the division. Someone should have asked the question.

“I thought he was insane,” Stephen says, and he isn’t crying anymore, and the stab of jealousy that cuts through Steve – to be so _measured_ – is shameful. “I thought he was power-hungry. No one imagined he was grieving.”

“Everyone knew he was grieving,” Steve amends. “He cried at my funeral. How do you miss that?”

Stephen stares at him.

“No one thought he was grieving for a lover,” he says flatly.

 _We weren’t_ , he wants to say, but what’s the point? They may as well have been. It’s what they both – it’s what Tony wanted. It’s why Tony suffered, and K’arr’n never would have been able to hurt him like that if Tony had known what Steve could be like –

“He thinks that you blame him,” Stephen says. “He thinks that he is a beaten thing not worth saving. He thinks he’s done you a tremendous wrong.”

“Then tell him I don’t,” Steve says dully. “Tell him –”

“He believes he deserves this,” Stephen continues, and there are tears standing in his eyes. “He wants to be euthanized. He thinks you robbed him of his suicide to punish him. He thinks being grievously used is penance for his oversight.”

“His –”

“Falling in love with you, Captain.”

“He was in love with a Skrull that beat him for fun,” Steve says quietly. “He told me he _wished he’d never met me –”_

“–half out of his mind with drink,” Stephen says sharply. “You miss the point. You need to tell him.”

“I – Excuse me?” Steve says. “I’ve forgiven him,” he says, “I’ve –”

“I am coming to you,” Stephen presses, “I am _asking you_ , _tell him what he means to you_.”

“He doesn’t want to _see_ me,” Steve pleads, shaking with how terrified it makes him. “He looked at me, today, before you started, and then he, he just –”

“Listen to me very carefully,” Stephen says. “He looked at you because he was desperate for comfort in a moment of terror and he thinks that you and everyone else have abandoned him.”

“I’m a predator,” Steve chokes. “He can’t even look me in the eye. How am I supposed to talk to him?”

“You try,” Stephen snaps. “You tell him he deserves to live because he needs you desperately.”

Steve feels dangerously close to falling to pieces.

“I don’t know how,” he says, feeling helpless and fainter than his body should ever feel. “We were cruel to each other. I was…”

Was, and still is, _terrified_ of the power he has.

“I don’t know how not to hurt him,” he mumbles.

“Do you love him?” Stephen says.

“Yes,” Steve says quietly, as sure as he’s ever been, because there’s nothing to even think about, it just _is_ , there’s nothing else to call this but love. He’s known it for years. They all have, maybe. Yes, he would trust Tony with his life. He would cross the world and back for Tony, has and would and will again.

(No, he didn’t – doesn’t – deserve him.)

Tony was enough to make him start a war.

It was never a decision, and Steve’s throat closes up and he feels like a fool.  

“You should have told him years ago,” Stephen says. “You need to understand that he’s ready to die.” He looks at his hands. “I’m no longer convinced we should deny him that,” he mumbles.   

Steve’s whole body is screaming _you had no right_.

“I felt everything,” Stephen explains, dull-voiced. “I…he deserves to have peace.”

He does.

Steve took that from him. 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've opted to split this chapter because 18k is like, not that digestible, so the next section will ACTUALLY BE PUBLISHED IN A WEEK or less because I'm finishing it right now and midterms are over.
> 
>  
> 
> here's a list of things that people have made because they read this and had feelings: 
> 
> FANWRITES:
> 
> missbeckywrites: [Fix-it Ficlet 1](http://missbeckywrites.tumblr.com/post/46803005912/cried-lately-over-sins-of-omission-look-no-further) and [The Rescue](The%20Rescue%20)
> 
> frostironistheperfectotp: [He's Always There](http://frostironistheperfectotp.tumblr.com/)
> 
>  
> 
> FANDRAWS: 
> 
> by qouinette: ([one](http://qouinette.tumblr.com/post/60649586851/whatjanesays-luvindowney-qouinette-i)) and ([two](http://qouinette.tumblr.com/post/63730827880/karrn-no-of-course-not-o-o)) 
> 
> by starkscap: ([knives](http://starkscap.tumblr.com/post/61631137757))
> 
> by nohaijiachi: ([snowicide](http://nohaijiachi.tumblr.com/post/45604709756/so-this-is-a-fancomic-for-sins-of)), ([steve and sam](http://nohaijiachi.tumblr.com/post/46710679757/ops-i-did-it-again-sing-i-apologize-for-that)), ([steve and carol](http://nohaijiachi.tumblr.com/post/51816124396/hey-i-did-a-thing)), ([shower scene](http://nohaijiachi.tumblr.com/post/47473381471/since-at-this-point-it-has-basically-become-a))
> 
> by yukiko: ([the cave](http://yuuuukiko.tumblr.com/post/58193843787/fanart-for-sins-of-omissions-by-kiyaar-from))
> 
> by sid: ([tony](http://tonywhoareyouspooking.tumblr.com/post/47446473549/quickle-this-is-fanart-for-my-current))
> 
> by torstai-kilpikonna: ([the shower](http://torstai-kilpikonna.tumblr.com/post/48337190011/inspired-by-chapter-23-of-tonywhatareyoudoings))
> 
> by fluxoid: ([the most adorable torture scene ever](http://2spookoid.tumblr.com/post/59562343929/i-made-a-fanart-from-the-amazing-horrible))


	27. Sins of Omission

Steve dreams of fields of flowers, of someone screaming at him, of burnished steel chains under his green hands and the smell of iron.

When he comes back to waking, his breath shuddering out of him in the cool dark, he thinks of death, and he thinks of betrayal.

He thinks of Tony.

There is no one here, just the suck of his lungs and the beating of his heart, and there is Tony, somewhere, Tony without his armor, the second heart he’s supposed to burden with truth today.

He isn’t shaved, or showered. His hands are clean, as clean as they can be between the bits of lint he gets when he mends his parka and the smears of Cosmoline on his thumbs. He smells like coffee. He smells like things Tony knew. He smells like Steve.

He washes the grime off his face. He brushes the warmth back into his cheeks. He pinches his cream-colored skin and watches red, human blood well up under his fingertips.

Stand up, he thinks.

If this is the only thing you do right in your miserable life, stand up.

 

\- - -

 

Carol doesn’t seem to realize he’s so keyed up he feels like he could actually puke.

“If no one answers, you don’t go in,” she’s saying. “It’s not an invitation.”

He doesn’t know why she says it. It’s not the time; she must hear his wild gallop of a pulse, how he’s held stiff and taut and his boots scuff on the tile with a squeak. He can’t think about her sex life. He’s not mad. He doesn’t care. Resentment is selfish; they all probably wish they had someone to come back to, in the dark. He can’t go there, can’t think about it right now because he’s about to force his presence on Tony, and she’s letting him–why is she letting him?

He imagines how the strap of his pack would feel in the small of his palm and –

“It’s going to be ok,” Carol says. “Steve, just – stop, ok, calm down.”

She smartens him up while he stares at the wall, pulls his sweater down over his wrists so Tony won’t see the veins bulging out of his arms and he won’t look so broad, maybe, reminds him that he’s got a week’s worth of stubble and his hair is shaggy and brown and he’s not armed and Beast will be there and she’ll be right outside and it’s going to be ok, it’s going to be ok, it’s going to be ok – 

(It’s going to be awful–)

“You’re not him,” she says. “You’re you.”

Steve pinches his eyes shut and swallows the wail he wants to be screaming out and tells himself he’s going to start, instead of ending, and opens the door.  

 

\- - -

 

Maria is sitting with him, a chair dragged over to the left side of his bed, a ratty Stephen King novel abandoned on the table next to a half-eaten bowl of soup. There’s a wheelchair propped up next to the door.

Tony is hunched in a drab sweater and someone’s cast-off jeans, clothes he’d never have touched before. He curls one of his hands around a pen and loosely mimics something like writing.

It’s clumsy. It’s appalling.

The cascading feeling in Steve’s chest turns into a torrent.

Steve is underdressed. He’s come dressed for a fight, come with his fists, with handfuls of dirt, with everything and  _nothing_ , with nothing of any use and this damnable secret that’s been boiling for years in his chest, and Tony can’t even hold a fucking pen.

Steve wants to say his name, wants to just feel the shape of it pass his lips, like it used to be. Allowed.

“I can write it for you,” Maria is saying, but Tony’s seen Steve and the pen’s been forgotten.

Tony doesn’t let himself look but for a fraction of a second, and then his body draws in and his eyes go far away and Steve loses sight of him, gone away, hidden somewhere beneath that bright gloss of shame clouding his eyes. Tony’s knuckles are white, where they show through the bandages. 

“Cap,” Tony says automatically, like the word is forced from him, and Steve wonders if he’s ever going to hear his name out of Tony’s mouth ever again.

The process of getting him to standing is excruciating to watch. Steve is so grateful for Maria he could cry. Maria, who gets to put her arm across his back and coax him upright, who gets to rub her hand in circles on his elbow and draw the IV out of his port and say “we’ll get you a voice recorder, ok?” She leaves him for a minute to pull the wheelchair out from behind the door and leaves him clutching at the bedrail.

“I don’t have shoes,” Tony says. It isn’t a protest. Steve doesn’t know what it is. The timbre of his voice is flat and small. 

“We’ll get you some shoes,” she says. “You can wear Clint’s coat. You don’t have to worry, ok?”

Steve will get him anything. Steve will march back into the city to bring him his armor, if that’s what he needs. Steve will do the worrying. Steve takes it upon himself to peel the leather on the wheelchair apart and tries to look small. He’s too big in the room, too awkward, too frightening.

"I don’t need it,” Tony’s voice warbles.

Maria edges towards him, and she’d have rolled her eyes once, but everything is dire, now. Even the things that shouldn’t hurt, do, and she shakes her head at Steve, slowly.   

"I know it’s hard for you to walk right now," Steve barrels on, _idiot_ , like they’re on speaking terms and he’s brave. He tells himself he needs start somewhere; he needs to pretend he’s allowed to say anything to Tony ever again and he can be casual about anything anymore. He needs to not notice how frail Tony is.

Tony’s legs are trembling. “I’m ok,” he insists.

"Tony,” Steve sighs, “sit in the wheelchair, or we’re not going outside.”

Tony grips his mangled hands together so tightly his knuckles go white, his gaze drifting askance, at Steve, at the wheelchair, at Steve's hands on it, at Maria, who looks like she’s never been as uncomfortable as she is now.

"Can I have a pillow?” he asks, his face turned to the ceiling, like he honestly thinks he might be refused.

They don’t take the wheelchair.

Maria gets them to the entrance hall, gets Tony dressed in a coat and a hat and boots she has to lace for him while Steve stands there feeling wretched and useless and turns his head away. She fits ridiculously oversized mittens over his bandaged fingers while Tony lists and stares at the wall. She tells them that Beast said Tony’s ok to walk – not for long and not without someone there, but he’ll be ok – and then she sits in the chair, tosses Steve a walkie, and opens the blast doors.

Tony is quiet, harsh breaths and the popping of his bones as they drift up the sloping tunnel and out the blast doors. Steve wrenches the second set open and Tony watches, tight-lipped and wide-eyed. It’s a display of strength, Steve thinks too late. He should have struggled with it, maybe.

They come out a few hundred feet away from the shore. It’s not far, Steve thinks - the lake is visible from where they stand, so Steve steers them that way, away from the signs pointing to the campground out across the bridge and toward the fences marking private boat access. Tony drifts after him without objection. They traipse down the road, Steve with his shotgun, Tony limping along with nothing, clutching his jacket around him and lowering his head to the cold.

Steve turns around to look every 20 seconds or so, just to be sure. Tony looks unbearably fragile, almost gangly now, the meat of him pruned away so he’s lithe and slender instead of the broad powerhouse he once was. Maria’s laced his boots as tight as they’ll go, and still, they slip down his calves when he steps. Steve worries he’s not breathing right. He keeps one bandaged hand on his chest and coughs every once in a while, like the cold is shuddering through him and he won’t ever be warm again.

The other hand comes up to touch the ugly burn on his neck, and Steve clenches his hands around the barrel of the shotgun and doesn’t reach out.

The beach is pebbly. The waves aren’t crashing here; there’s just water lapping away at the edge where the ice has broken up, driftwood scattered down the shore. They stay by the tree line, where dirt gives way to rock, where the trees are scarred and stooping and the wind can’t quite get the chill into their bones.

“Are you ok?” Steve asks, finally, when his boots crunch on ice laid over gravel and there’s nowhere else to walk. He tries to keep the shape of his voice soft.

Tony blinks like he doesn't understand the question. His eyes dart. He looks over Steve's shoulder. Not at his face, never at his face.   

“Is this–” he tries. “They went over this with you, right?” he says nervously.

Tony is silent for an unbearable minute. “You know I’m not brain-damaged, right?” he asks quietly.

“Yes,” Steve says carefully, “I just want to make sure you’re ok with this.”

 _Talking to your rapist_ , he doesn’t say.

“Do you want something from me,” Tony says, in a flat voice that sounds like a stranger’s.

“I want you to tell me if you don’t feel safe,” Steve says hoarsely.

Something distant flits across Tony’s features like he’s trying to chase it away. “Are you going to yell at me?” Tony asks. “Are you going to hit me?”

Like it's reasonable that Steve actually might. 

“I thought you’d want some air,” Steve says, ashamed the minute it leaves his mouth. “I’m not going to hit you,” he mumbles.

Tony stares at his feet. “You brought me out here,” he says, like it’s any explanation. “Privacy.”

This is what a chance feels like, an itch, a tickle at the back of his throat,  _privacy._  Just him and the dead trees and the Skrull patrols in the distance and Tony’s dull face, waiting for the next cruelty.

“This is where I’d shoot me,” Tony says, and there’s no smile this time, just exhaustion in every line of his face.

“I - _no_ ,” Steve tries, but he’s already losing what he’d rehearsed, he’s already derailed, already dropping everything he’s been planning to say for days and days. Composure is a joke, it was always going to be a joke. He can’t stop looking at Tony’s neck, at the cruel shadow of a bruise that rings his throat, at the sunken shape of Tony’s face, at the way Tony is carrying himself like he’s expecting a blow.

“We can go back,” Steve says stiffly. “This was just - for you, I’m sorry, I didn’t–”

He didn’t ask. Did anyone ask Tony? Steve is suddenly, inexplicably furious.

“How much longer am I expected to do this?” Tony asks, blank-faced.

“We can go back,” Steve says again, “I – it’s ok, let’s go back.”

Tony doesn’t move to follow him, just blinks, his gaze drifting to Steve’s gun for the twentieth time since they’ve left the bunker. “Is this your contribution?” he asks, his voice strangled and dull. He looks at his feet, at his legs, at his mangled hands that he shoves up under his arms. “Drew the short straw? It’s your turn to walk me today?”

“I thought you’d want to see the sky,” Steve says, but it’s weak, it’s already late, he’s already weary because  _this isn’t going to work_ –

“I’ve seen it,” Tony says, clipped.

“They took you outside?”

Tony’s face jerks into a grimace, and then it’s gone, as if it were never there. “Sometimes,” he mumbles. He glances up at the ruined sky with abject _blankness_ in his face. “Is this the part where you make a speech?”

“No speeches,” Steve rasps.

“Are you gonna tell me life is worth living?” Tony says, his eyes looking just as dull as they always do, like he can’t be bothered to care one way or another. “Tell me. I’m no trouble. I’m not a colossal waste of resources you don’t have. Did Carol coach you?”

“I think there’s been a misunderstanding,” Steve chokes.

Tony waits, more habit than patience, for the rest.  “You’ll find I’m very receptive,” he says dully.

It might have been wit, once.

It hits Steve like that, all at once. That this was - that Tony’s a stranger. It’s like talking to a stranger.

“Then _talk to me_ ,” Steve blurts, because he has to keep going, because he wants to run more than anything and that has always meant  _carry on_. “I want to talk.” He wants to talk about how the last ten years have been a farce, he wants to talk about how it felt to see Tony’s face through the faceplate on a sidewalk in Queens.

He wants to scream at Tony for lying to him.

Steve- says, “I’m not here to blame you.”

Tony stares and stares.

“I’d like to go back now,” he says, finally. His voice shakes, like he’s afraid to even ask.

“There are things I need to say,” Steve hears, in his own quavering voice.

“Are there,” Tony gulps, so very quiet.

“Yes.”  _Please_.

Tony’s breath hitches, and it’s only because of Steve’s ridiculous hearing that he catches it at all. “I don’t want to do this,” he says to his hands.

“I’m asking you this as a favor,” Steve says. “Please, just listen. And if you –”

Tony is waiting, silent and tense and ghostly pale, while he trips over his words and earns them more time in the cold.  

“I feel like I’ve failed you,” Steve says. “You–” _You are a life I almost wasted_ , he thinks. “You couldn’t tell it wasn’t me,” he tries to explain.

Tony stares over Steve’s shoulder. “Yeah,” he says, barely gets it out, and there’s absolutely no inflection in his voice. “I should have been better.”

“No,” Steve says. “Tony, I didn’t mean –”

“Add it to the list,” Tony says, almost inaudibly.

“There’s no list –”

“What is it you want from me?” Tony asks, like he honestly can’t figure it out, his eyes glassy and pale.

“I just want to understand,” Steve says, when what he wants is everything, miracles, chances he  _doesn’t deserve_ –

“Understand what,” Tony says, no idea, no idea at all that Steve even thinks he’s worth anything at all. “There’s nothing to understand,” Tony carries on in his awful dead timbre, “You shouldn’t –” he trails off, scuffs his boot through gravel and lurches. “Apologies don’t mean anything,” he mumbles, finally, looking at the ground. “Not for this.”

“No,” Steve gets out, “you don’t have to apologize.”

Tony stares at his feet.

“Then what do I have to do,” Tony says, dull-eyed and worn, the shadows smudged into every inch of his face. “What do I –” he starts, tries to fucking –  _grin_  and ends up looking like he’s inches from tears, and then stops himself again, bites down on his lip and presses his eyes shut in exhaustion. “You all take turns. Watching me. Feeding me.” His breath hitches as he scuffs his feet. “I know you all hate it," he whispers.

“This is not about the Avengers,” Steve says, calm (calm). “This is about you, ok.”

Tony doesn’t say anything.

“Tony,” Steve presses. It’s like talking to a dead thing, it’s awful, he won’t even look at him –

“They all wanted to leave me,” Tony says. His face is a desolate blank mask, and Steve wants to refute it, but it’s true, and Tony never misses anything. “They talk about me like I’m not even there.” He looks up, wrapping his arms around himself like a blanket. “I guess it’s fine,” he decides, and his whole body just sags, and Steve can’t stand seeing him roll over like this.  

“It’s not fine,” Steve says.

“Ok,” Tony says flatly.

“They’re not trained," Steve says, and Tony's eyes make it up to Steve's chest before they dart away again. "They don't know how to deal with, they don’t know he hurt you for months even before–"

Steve clamps his mouth shut, because he’s mastered the art of too little, too late.

"But I guess you know,” Tony says, after an agonizing silence, "You obviously know all about it.” He looks away, raw misery and  _shame_  in every line in his face.

 _You meddle_ , Carol had said. 

“I wasn’t –” Steve says. "There was footage, from the Helicarrier."

“Oh,” Tony echoes, like that's all there is. 

“No one else saw it,” Steve says, like it’s any fucking consolation.

“The Helicarrier is in the harbor,” Tony recites, dull and quiet. “I saw it, it’s gone, there’s nothing. It's gone.”

“Maria saved one of the database cores,” is all Steve can come up with.

He doesn’t elaborate, because he had absolutely no right. He's just trampled all over whatever this could have been, and all he can do is backpedal while Tony stands there shivering. 

This is the part where Tony would have yelled, before.

Tony doesn’t yell. He bites his lip right through his stitches, something terrible and stark arranging itself on his blank face and Steve wants to fix him, wants to march him back and stitch him up and secret him away, wants to scream  _I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry –_

"And you watched it, because everything is Captain America’s business," Tony says, his eyes darting up wildly as if he doesn't dare look for whatever repercussion he's anticipating. Steve thinks there are tears welling there when Tony raises his head enough to see. “Well,” Tony says, his voice flat, “now you know.”

(God, please don’t let him cry, please don’t let it be his fault.) 

"I’m sorry," Steve says, "I was – "  _Drunk._ “I screwed up,” he whispers, and it’s still no good; the look on Tony’s face makes him hate everything he’s ever been.

Tony hooks his hands up under his arms again – Steve should have made him put on gloves, but that probably would have been cruel, too, that’s all he knows how to be, now – and his gaze drifts down to Steve’s boots in the snow, the hair peeking out of his hat falling into his eyes. “You had no right to watch that,” he says wretchedly, and his voice is curling on it, he has no walls, and Steve is awful, because he started this, because once upon a time, Tony used to snap instead of crumbling when Steve had broached his boundaries. “I hate that you saw that,” he says, and his eyes grow wide. “I’m sorry,” he amends. “I’m sorry.”

Steve wishes with all his heart that Tony would scream at him.

“No, why are you _sorry_?” Steve asks, and he’s out of his depth, he never learned to do this, all of this is wrong, he wants it to be _right again_ -

“I’m sorry,” Tony is gasping, suddenly, quietly, horribly contained and hushed, and he’s breathing too fast, he’s shivering and Steve wants to hold him and he  _can’t._ “You had every right, I should have known, I shouldn't have done it. I shouldn't have, I'm an idiot. I thought." The burn on his neck glistens when he swallows and brings his head up. “I’m a fucking idiot. I’m an idiot, I’m sorry.”

“Tony,” Steve breathes. “You’re not an idiot. What did you think?”

Tony waits for a long minute before he answers. "A second chance," he tries, like it’s all he’s ever wanted in the fucking world and he’s still certain he doesn’t deserve it.

"Tony, he was beating you," Steve whispers, "How could you have –” 

He bites it away. No accusations.  _Kind._

“Just, why didn’t you leave,” he mumbles.

Tony looks absolutely wretched.

“Tony _–_ ”

“What do you  _want_?” Tony gasps, swallowing furiously. He runs a shaking hand over the thing on his neck, again. “I was selfish,” he says, the shame knotting in his throat, swiping at his eyes with his hands full of gauze. “It was  _you_ ,” he gasps. “I’m a selfish shit,” he tries again. “It’s what I always, I’m _sorry._ ”

 _It was you._   

Steve feels like he’s been stabbed.

“What do you want me to say?” Tony asks, his face turned skyward, tears shining on his cheeks. “Where would I have gone? They despise me.”

“Tony,  _they don’t–”_

“They do,” Tony says, and his voice is some pitiable compromise between hoarse and wildly high-pitched. “They did then.”

“They would have arrested him,” Steve says, “if you’d told someone.”

Tony is terrifyingly silent.

“I don’t know what you want from me,” Tony chokes.

“I wanted to  _apologize_ ,” Steve says, feeling hysterical, because it’s already not fair, anything he asks for is automatically unfair. “I don’t know,” he says, lost, because this is his responsibility, this desperate creature Tony’s become, this is his mess to clean up, these are their threads he’s unraveled, and he has to pull them both back together somehow and stop ruining everything he touches.

Tony pinches his lips together and actually _flinches_. 

"Please don’t make fun of me,” he says to his feet. 

“How could you ever think that?” Steve demands, and for a moment he refuses to believe that this is Tony, that this pitiful creature is the man named Tony Stark.

And, when he looks, Tony is silent and wide-eyed and small in the snow. Tony is hanging on his every silence, watching every shift of his arms and flinch of his hands. Tony is waiting, with every certainty, to be hurt.

Steve swallows, tries to get rid of the knots in his chest, adjusts, lowers his expectations, again.

“I’m not,” Steve says, tries again, begins anew, promises, pours everything he has into brushing every word with sincerity. “I  _wouldn’t_ , I’m not lying, I want to talk to you, you’re going to kill yourself if you don’t –”

Tony blinks, just once, and Steve watches his eyes spill over with tears he’s been holding back.

“Yes,” Tony says, “I tried that.”

“I'm sorry,” Steve says in a rush, “I didn’t mean that, it was clumsy, I’m sorry, Tony –”

“Why are you talking to me,” Tony says, and when he picks his head up the dark hollows under his eyes are shining and wet. “We both know your time is worth more than this.”

“No,” Steve says, and he’s starting to doubt he’ll make it through this conversation without losing his shit again. “I am _right here_ , of course I wanted to–”

“I’m not for talking,” Tony bites out, and smiles a mirthless smile with one of his canines knocked out.

Steve wants to say it, he’s so wrong and Steve owes him the world. “It will help,” Steve says instead, because he has to work up to that, wills it to be true. “It will help, Tony, talking will help.”

Tony stares out over the lake. He sniffs, a little, swipes at his nose with the sleeve of his jacket as the wind whips his hair around in filthy dark strands. “Which part is it that you want to hear?” Tony asks. His voice slides back into the dead timbre he had when he was asking K’arr’n to hurt him on the fucking tape, when he was walking around half-dead and nobody noticed.

“I don’t know,” Steve says helplessly, “I don’t, I can’t imagine,” he says, and he’s ashamed and he doesn’t understand _why_. “I can’t imagine what you’re feeling, I –”

“Is that what this is?” Tony whispers, and his lip is trembling. “Ask away.”

Steve thinks maybe he should have been prepared for this.

“It’s ok,” Tony says, in some macabre parody of casual, wrapping his arms around himself, “I know what I’ve done.” He nods, to no one, nods and draws his mouth into a thin line and stares at nothing. “It’s not a secret.”

“It wasn’t just you,” Steve says. “It wasn’t your–”

“I can tell you anything," Tony bites out. “I have no restraint. I’m your _asset_ , right,” he spits, and Steve’s gut twists because he deserves it. “Want me to tell you what I let him do? He talked like you talk, he knew everything about you. He–” And then he’s faltering, trying to be bitter and he can't even get the words out, all hurt and no venom, a desperate spitting thing that doesn’t think he’s worth anything. It’s in the hunch of his shoulders and the slight of his back and the way he doesn’t care that his jacket’s open a little as the wind whips over the lake. “Do you want me to tell you what it’s like,” he manages, clutching at the cuff of his jacket, “being with someone who’s never going to love you?”

Steve tries with all his heart to summon some of the courage he used to have in droves.

“Do you know what it’s like, watching someone you love die thinking you hate them?” Steve counters.

Tony stops kicking at the ground. 

Steve almost can’t believe he’s said it, but it’s there, now, them and the gravel and this _thing_ between them. He thinks maybe he’s botched it (again), when Tony doesn’t say anything, that maybe he’s terrified again, and then Tony picks up his head and makes his face into something new, colder and sadder, if that’s even possible, an ugly, bitter smile that doesn’t (won’t ever, Steve fears) make it to his eyes.

“No,” Tony says, that dead smile on his face again. “I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

And Steve remembers that video, the one that Carol turned off before he could watch, the one with Tony sitting beside his dead body, the first time he watched Tony take off his helmet since the entire fucking war started. 

Something cold is in Steve's chest. 

“Don’t lie to me, ok,” Tony says, pressing his eyes closed, “Don’t lie to me because you – it makes me feel like I’m going insane.” He turns away, starts to limp back to the embankment. “I’ve been lied to enough.”

This is going to go on forever, because Steve says the wrong things, always, he’s stuck, he’s not saying what he should be, and all Tony has left is pieces of broken glass to hold onto, and Steve may as well be throwing bottles at him –

“Tony –”

“Don’t make this about you,” Tony mumbles, “this isn’t something you can  _shoulder –_ ”

“It’s always been about me,” Steve says flatly, because he knows that now. He’s cheating.

“You don’t  _love me_ ,” Tony says, shivering in the cold. “You don’t,” he says.

“Why not,” Steve whispers.

“Because you’re a paragon,” Tony says, his voice entirely flat. “And I’m a traitor.”

“I’m not, I’m just –” Steve says desperately. “I screw up too, Tony –”

“You make mistakes, I’m the  _fuck-up_ ,” Tony says, “I always have been, that’s why it was always – Iron Man,” he says, and his voice is brittle on the words. “It was always Iron Man on the team.”

“You’re the same person,” Steve protests. 

Tony’s mouth jerks into a bitter line, and then it’s gone.

“No,” he says. “They fixed me.” His eyes are wild and glassy and staring off over Steve’s left shoulder. His jaw clenches and unclenches. “I’m better now. They took it out,” he says, “my better half. I’m normal now.”

It scares Steve, runs right through his bones, that he can't tell if Tony is joking or irreparably broken. “I thought they just disabled you," he tries. 

“It’s the same thing,” Tony says, and his voice is shaking. “Disable Tony, take Tony offline, get rid of the machine and you have S.H.I.E.L.D. under your thumb.”

“I never thought you were a machine."

“Just insane, right?” Tony tries to spit, but there’s nothing behind it. He’s trembling. “Powers I don’t understand. Just mostly machine,” he adds,  _shaking._

“Tony, no,” Steve says desperately. “I didn’t mean that.”

“Then what did you mean,  _Steve_?” The shape of it sounds like a curse.

Steve tries to go back, tries to remember a time when he could be righteous and angry and throw it Tony’s way, and neither of them would really suffer for it.

“I thought you were losing yourself,” Steve says quietly, like it’s not his own fear, like any of it ( _any_  of it) even fucking matters now.  _I thought I was losing you._ “I thought –”

“No, you thought I was a tyrant,” Tony finishes before he gets a chance. “You thought I did it for the power.”

Steve tries to remember what he thought. 

“I don’t –”

“What do you think now?” Tony asks, like he’s dead and it just hasn’t reached his voice yet. “You were right,” he throws out, like it’s nothing at all. He drags his brimming eyes up to meet Steve’s. “Are you pleased?” he asks, like he honestly doesn’t know the answer.

“No, I’m not pleased,” Steve whispers miserably. “How could I ever be pleased about this?”

Tony blinks.

“You hate me,” he says, like it’s a fact he’s long committed to heart.

 _No,_  Steve thinks,  _hated_ , wants to be thinking  _never_ and can’t, not in good conscience, not without lying, and Tony’s lip is trembling.  _Yes_ , he thinks, remembers the way it felt to have everything and nothing the next minute, remembers telling himself he’d  _do it if he had the chance –_

“I hated that you were stubborn,” Steve says. “I hated that you didn’t listen.”

Tony stares somewhere off over Steve's shoulder. 

“You called me Stark,” he finally says, his voice fracturing around his own name.

That’s right, he did. That’s right. He would have killed him if he’d gotten the chance. That’s right, he had the chance, tried to take the chance, and –

That’s right, that’s all of it, right there.

Steve thinks he would gouge his own heart out if he could take it back.

“Well, I was pissed,” he says, as if anything he can ever say will make up for those lapses, for those bouts of righteous bullshit that drove them both into the ground.  _I was wrong_ , he thinks, but after all this time, he can’t  _say it._ “I didn't want this,” he says.

“What did you want?” Tony asks.

Steve is done lying, because there maybe aren't any more chances, after this. 

“I think I wanted to punish you,” Steve says, shaking. His voice is unsteady.

Tony ducks his head and wipes at his eyes, and Jesus, he is crying, now, Steve is making him cry –

“Does this meet with your standards, then,” Tony mumbles, and waves at his scant body. He reaches a hand up, so slowly, wipes at his cheeks with such restraint it tears at Steve to even watch. Tony tries to smile, and his face cracks and shines with tears instead. "How'd I do?"

“Tony,” he says weakly.

“What do you  _want from me_ ,” Tony says again, still flinching away from the sound of his own name.

“Listen,” Steve says, blinking the wet out of his eyes, swallowing like his throat isn’t tightening and his mouth isn’t dry and this is a thing he can do. “I can’t go back,” he says. “I can’t go back, and I can’t take back anything I said, I can’t.” He runs his hand desperately through his hair and pinches the barrel of the gun so hard it’s going to leave grooves in his skin. “I can’t undo what he, I can't take us - I can't –”

He looks up, desperate for the old Tony, the Tony that would finish his sentences and fill in the blanks and set him straight.

Tony just stares at him, whatever light he had once, gone, and Steve feels tears burning in his eyes.

“I needed you,” he says, heading the torrent off, biting them back, as if it’s any kind of answer at all. “I _needed_ you and I was losing you. You wouldn’t talk to me after Extremis, it was like you were a stranger, I thought - you were gonna leave me behind,” he says, and he’s angry again, senselessly angry, because they’ve been robbed of everything, because he was selfish and it was Tony that got left behind, in the end. He looks at Tony, even though Tony isn’t managing to look back. “I thought – I needed you, and I thought you would  _change_ , thought you  _were changing_  after you put that shit in your body, and it  _scared me_.”

Steve is scared now. Steve is scared that he is talking to a dead man. Steve is terrified. "I needed you," he says again. 

“I think you made it abundantly clear you didn’t need me,” Tony says.

The quiet truth of it makes Steve fucking furious.

“I love you,” Steve says. 

Tony is stock-still.

“No,” Tony says flatly, “you don't.” He brings a hand up to his wet face. "No more lies," he mumbles. 

No more lies, thinks Steve, and dives. 

"I've loved you for years," Steve says.

Tony stares and stares until his eyes are spilling over with tears and he isn’t looking at anything. 

“No,” Steve says, horrified, “Why are you crying, Tony, come on–”

“Don’t,” Tony says, _shaking_ , “I can’t, they all, _please,_ I’ll say whatever you want, just.” He swipes at his cheeks and it does nothing to quell the flood. “Please don't lie to me,” he says in a rush. "I can't, not you-"

“I’m not,” Steve says, and his throat is closing because this never even occurred to him, because sincerity has always worked in the past, because he’s an idiot and he’s so fucking cruel. “I’m not lying to you, it's not a trick, I’m _not_ , Tony, _please–”_

“ _Don't_ ,” Tony says, tears beading down his cheeks. “Please,” he says, and his mouth is screwed up in pain. “You loved Sharon.”

“Yes,” Steve says miserably, a deluge of guilt rising in him, unbidden, for her, too. “Of course I did, for a long time, but that doesn’t, Tony, I don’t think I knew what it was. Or I didn’t let myself want it. I didn’t–”

He  _didn't_. 

He thinks he shouldn’t feel as ashamed as he does, probably.

“You wanted to marry Sharon, you asked me about –  _rings_ , you wanted to,” Tony gasps, and, god, this isn’t how it was supposed to go, how does Steve go back, he can’t take it back, he can’t ever take it back, he doesn’t ever want to take it back –

“I know, and she wasn’t  _you_ , and she wasn't Rachel, or,” Steve says, and he's not going to think about Bucky, right now, and he tightens his hands into fists so he doesn’t claw at his face. “I don’t know how to tell you this,” he confesses in a breathless rush. “I never thought I'd – _say_ this, to you, I didn't plan this part," he says, and he feels dizzy with it, unmoored, terrified. "Of course I love you, and I’ve wanted you, and I never, and I’ve been a jackass about a lot of things, and you–”

 _You said you loved me_ , he thinks, and closes his eyes against a sob rising in his throat. “What are you thinking,” Steve whispers, terrified to hear the answer.

Tony blinks at him like a beaten animal.

“Do you want me now?” Tony says, like he hasn’t even  _heard,_  like he can’t remember freedom, like he can’t remember any of it, anything of what they were. “What can I give you, you can–”

“ _No_ ,” Steve says, feeling faint, “I’m telling you I – you could have told me,” and it’s agony, to be robbed of this, to have to say it like this, like it’s shameful, to have Tony ripped to pieces when he should be welcoming it, to – force it on him like this. “I would have been that for you, if I’d – I didn’t know that’s what you wanted–”

“You never wanted me that way,” Tony says, with surprising ferocity, “you would have said something if it was that important, it’s how you  _work,_  you had forever to tell me–”  

“No, it's - you’re not listening,” Steve says, as gently as he can, he’s trying,  _god_ , he is. He’s trembling with it. “I didn’t – I think I would have been your lover,” he whispers. “If you’d asked me for that, I would have–” He would have jumped, he would have thrown himself into it, he could have, he could have learned, he doesn’t know if it’s the truth, but it  _has to be_  –

“This is just  _guilt_ ,” Tony gasps. “You’re always patronizing when you feel guilty– ”

“I  _mean this_ ,” Steve says, and he’s almost yelling, he’s almost mad. “I’m telling you this because I need to know if you never want to  _see me again_ , Tony, I am  _desperate_ , here–”

“–you weren’t even going to  _tell me–”_

“ _No_!” Steve says, because of course he wasn’t. How could he have? “I don’t – Rumiko had just died, Tony, you were with – no, of course not, and you didn’t, and - Bucky had just, I don’t–”

“You don’t need me,” Tony snaps back at him. “You didn’t, you never have, and we both know it, you’re full of  _shit_ , you don’t – not now, I can’t – you tried to kill me and you were _right_ ,” he says. It’s vitriol; Tony’s always reserved the worst of it for himself and this is no different, it’s in every line in his beaten face. “I’m a liar, and I'm a  _whore_ , there’s no place for me,  _everyone knows it_.”

(But he’s everything,  _everything_ , and Steve didn’t know until he couldn’t have it, until Tony was going cool in his arms and he felt his heart going, too –)

“You always have a place,” Steve says, and he feels hopelessly foolish, because it’s not enough. (He’s never going to be enough for Tony.) “Tony, you’re, it’s whatever you want it to be–”

“No one  _wants me_ ,” he says, his voice cracked and broken and so, so certain. “No one wants to live with–” he trips on it, mid-sentence, and his eyes go frozen and shuttered. “I’m a traitor,” he says, and it sounds like he’s not breathing right. “I’m  _shit_ ,” he says, gasping a little, “you can’t even look at me, none of you can–”

“What are we doing here, then?” Steve snaps.  

Tony looks up, his eyes bloodshot and cornered. “You’re different,” he spits, “you’re a hero. It’s your job to do what they won’t, you’re proving a point–”

“Fucking –  _forget them_ ,” Steve says. “They’re angry and tired and they’re  _being idiots_ , you know that, right? You’re not the problem, Tony.”

“No, the problem is no one wants to live with trash,” Tony says.

Steve hates K’arr’n with all his heart.

“ _Tony_ ,” Steve says, and wonders if the ache will ever hurt less. “You’re not, you’re not, just –”

“I let them in,” Tony says sharply, “I gave them everything they needed, and then I broke, and then I begged,” Tony says, wiping at his nose with his sleeve. “I participated, I fucking – crawled on the  _ground_ , what the  _fuck_  else do you call that –”

“That’s called rape,” Steve says, horrified. “ _Tony_ , it wasn’t your fault –”

“You don’t know  _shit_ ,” Tony says, and he’s  _shaking_ , petrified and ashamed, and Steve  _hates_  it. “You fucking – watch some videos, and you think you know everything? You think you understand, you don’t  _love me_ , you think I’m  _pathetic_  –”

“ _DON’T TELL ME HOW I FEEL_ ,” Steve ends up shouting.

Tony doesn’t shout back.

Steve watches him freeze, watches him swallow and gasp as a flinch runs over his face and his eyes go distant and wet and his lips press themselves into a line.

“I’m sorry,” Steve says, “I’m not mad at you, I’m sorry.”

Tony won’t look at him, he’s biting his lip and looking at the filthy sky and his fragile chest is rising and falling and Steve worries he’s going to fall over –

“Tony,” Steve says, “ _please_ , talk to me.”

Tony sobs, great heaving gasps that he doesn’t let leave his mouth. He sinks down, something awful focused and distant in his eyes, his throat swallowing furiously, his face a helpless mask of shame and fear, and Steve did that, Steve’s face did that to him.  

“I’m sorry,” Steve says, and he doesn’t know how to be soothing, because he’s always going to hurt, his voice is always going to be an assault, and he has to get Tony to calm down, what if he’s having a heart attack, what if,  _god_ , “I’m  _sorry_ , Tony, I didn’t mean anything, I’m  _upset_  –”

“That’s what he said,” Tony gasps. “It’s just what he said, I can’t –”

“What did I say?” Steve asks weakly.

“ _Leave_ ,” Tony whispers, and it’s a drawn out, desperate hiss.

“I can’t leave you out here,” Steve says miserably, silently cursing his temper, K’arr’n,  _everything_. “I can’t leave you.” He reaches, crouching, for one of Tony’s shoulders, and Tony flinches away.

Steve crouches back on his heels and bites his own hand until he tastes blood.

“I can’t sort you out,” Tony sobs, rocking back on his heels. “I look at you and I see him, I don’t know how to fucking separate you, I don’t.”

“Tony, listen to me, I’m – not gonna touch you,” Steve says, “I’m not him, I’m not gonna hurt you.”  _I’m trying not to hurt you_ , he wants to scream.

“I know that,” Tony cries, “I’m not a fucking  _dumbass_ , my brain knows that, I'm sorry,  _I’m sorry –_ ”

“I know you’re not,” Steve says, heartbroken and furious and  _tired_ , and he’s not sure if Tony can even hear him, he’s not sure Tony cares, but he can’t not say it. “It’s ok, please don’t apologize, Tony, can you breathe –”

“I don’t know what to do,” Tony is sobbing. “I don’t, how am I supposed to tell, it’s like you’re  _him_  and I’m a game, you’re fucking with me again–”

“I’m not,” Steve whispers, “Tony, I’m not him, you’re far away from there –”

“You hated me,” Tony wails. “ _You hated me_ , what changed? You hated me and I deserved it and I  _don’t understand_  –”

“How could you think I’d ever think you deserved this, Tony–”

“Why are you wasting your time,” Tony says, over him. “Why would you, why, you all left me there, you tried to kill me and then you  _left me_  there,  _what changed?_ ”

“I  _love you_ ,” Steve says hoarsely. 

"I don't  _believe_  you," Tony bursts. “When you love someone, you fucking  _listen_.”

Steve might call it bitter if he didn’t know how to recognize heartbroken and bleeding by now.

“I was  _terrified_ ,” Steve gasps, and he's reeling, because it’s awful, because this is awful and Tony doesn’t believe him. “I thought I’d never, I thought you’d – I should have, I know, I should have talked, and I should have –”

“You’re  _never terrified,_ ” Tony spits, wide-mouthed and gasping, “You’re  _lying_ , you’re  _lying_ and this is  _pity –”_

“ _Yes_ ,” Steve says desperately, “yes, it’s pity, Tony _,_ of course it’s pity, it’s  _excruciating,_  seeing you like this –”

Tony rocks himself back and forth on the freezing ground, and there’s nothing Steve can do but watch.

“I was angry with you,” Steve says. “I might have lost it, like you said I couldn’t – remember? I wanted you dead,” he says, and it’s the most shameful thing he’s ever said. “We lost our way,” he tries to say, and his voice falters, but he  _has to_. “We were both petty and I was cruel and I didn’t listen and I thought you were gonna die the other night, after all of that, you were gonna die thinking I  _hate you_ –”

“ _Everyone_ hates me,” Tony wails, "what's  _you too?"_

 _"_ Tony, I'm _sorry,_ " Steve pleads. 

 _"_ All you had to do was let me _die,"_  Tony all but screams at him. "I  _asked you_. I asked you for that, I." 

Steve is a monster, he’s going to  _hell_  and all he had to fucking do was  _look_  –

“I  _know_ ,” Steve whispers. 

“I've said sorry," Tony says, and there's snot shining on his chin, "I’m sorry I did that to you, I am, please believe me, I’m sorry, I  _didn’t know_ , I didn’t know it wasn’t you, I should have been better,  _I didn’t know –_ ”

“I  _know_ , I know you didn’t,  _it wasn't_   _your fault_ ," he cries, as Tony’s body shakes, not a foot away, as he can’t touch him or hold him or pick him up off the freezing ground. “You didn’t deserve it, Tony, you didn’t deserve any of it, please, believe me, it wasn’t fair and it  _wasn’t your fault_  –”

Tony buries his head in his hands.

“It  _wasn’t_ ,” Steve swears. “I’d do anything if it could have been me instead of you, I’d take it  _all_ ,” he whispers, feeling as fierce and proud and heartbroken as Tony has ever managed to make him feel, “Everything. I would take it all a thousand times for you if I could, Tony –”

“Stop,” Tony begs, “I can’t –”

“I don’t want anything from you,” Steve says helplessly. “I don’t.” He swabs at his eyes. “I want you to be  _ok._ ”

“You always want something,” Tony cries.

“I don’t want you to hurt anymore,” Steve sobs, but Tony is crying. 

“I know,” Steve whispers, and he’s despicable, he  _knows_. “I know, I'm a hypocrite, I stopped you, I didn’t listen,” he says, shaking, wipes his face for the thousandth time and he doesn’t even care, because nothing has ever been more important than this, even if he’s saying goodbye. “I didn’t listen, and I should have listened, I should have listened to you about so many things–”

“ _I don't have anything_ ,” Tony sobs, and he may as well be screaming for the hoarseness in his voice. “I gave you  _everything I was_ ,” he wails, and his face is a mess of snot and tears and bruised skin, “I don’t  _have_  anything, I have nothing to give you, you don’t understand, you –”

“You’re all I have  _left_ ,” Steve all but screams. “You were my home before anyone else was.”

Tony looks up at him, meets his eyes and looks ashamed to be doing it, desperate and heartbroken and humiliated.

“Then when will it suit you,” he asks, his mouth curled up in anguish, “When will you be ready for me to go?”

It severs something in Steve.

“Never,” he admits in a gasp that spills helplessly out of his throat. “I didn’t think, I was  _selfish_  and you were dying and I was  _terrified_  and I didn’t think, I didn’t  _think_ , I couldn’t stand it, I couldn’t handle losing you too, and I wasn’t thinking about anything I should have been, I wasn’t –  _Tony, please.”_

Tony is crying, and Steve’s can feel his heart rent and bleeding, and this is what dying feels like, probably.

“ _I’m sorry_ ,” he says, his voice fracturing at the end of it. “I wasn’t – it wasn’t my choice to make, I wasn’t trying to be  _cruel_ , Tony, I was  _scared_ ,” he says, as if it matters.

Every fiber of him is desperate to believe that it matters, it has to, it  _has to_ , he has to believe it, one of them does. It’s going to be enough, someday, it has to be, and if it’s not, he’ll try anyway, he’ll try for the rest of his miserable life –

“I wanted to tell you,” Steve says, swallowing, gulping lungfuls of clear air. “I’m telling you now. I don’t hate you, I’ll prove it to you if you let me have the chance. I  _don’t care,”_  he says, the tears freezing on his cheeks. “I don’t care what you did, I don’t care what they did to you, I don’t. You’re Tony. You’re Shellhead, remember?”

Tony's face has never looked more desolate. 

“I’m  _nothing_ ,” he chokes, between sobs, “you don't, I've, you don’t  _want me–_ ”

“Tony,  _no_ ,” Steve chants, “Of course I want you, you’re  _you_ ,  _god_ , is that what you – think I think? Is that what you’d think of me?  _Tony–_ ”

“ _I pretended it was you_ ,” Tony wails. “I knew you’d never forgive me and I did it anyway. You never would have done that, you never would have done the things I did, I  _let them_ , I'm, you never would have begged, you’re  _better than that –_ ”

“There’s nothing to forgive,” Steve says, “I’m not  _better, I let this happen to_ you, he was a spy, Tony, he–” 

“ _YELL AT ME,_ ” Tony tries to scream over his raw throat, “Just  _stop it_ , stop making  _excuses_  for me–”

“ _Tony_ ,” Steve says, and his heart feels stuck through with knives. “There’s nothing to  _forgive_ ,” he whispers again. “It wasn’t your fault, please, _believe me_ –”

“It was your body,” Tony says, edging into hysterical, his blue eyes strangled and dim. “There were a thousand things I should have noticed, and I ignored them all because I  _missed you_ , because  _I wanted you_ and then  _I had_ you and everyone _hated me for it_ and I knew I didn’t deserve you and I _did it anyway_ , you shouldn’t  _forgive_  me for that,” he says. “I killed Sharon, I got her  _killed_  and I made you hate me and I don’t know why you’re still here, I don’t know why you’re–”

“I’m here because I need you,” Steve chokes, “I  _do_ , I'm going to be better, I’m going to – I’m not  _him_ ,” he says desperately. “I’m not.”

Tony lifts his head, his mouth fallen open in a desperate plea for air, his eyes flooded and pink.

Just when he meets Steve’s eyes, finally, he curls over on himself, his body wracked with heaving sobs.

“I try,” he gasps, “I try and I try, I don't, I'm  _sorry –_ ”

"I'm telling you you don’t have to try anymore _,”_  Steve gasps, and he means it so fiercely it sears him through. “I don’t want to be someone you hate because you don’t want to be here anymore. I don’t want to lose you. I don't, but I’m not going to make you stay, I will do whatever it takes,” Steve says. “I will help you, if that’s what you want. I’ll leave, if you never want to see me again," and he can't believe he's even saying it and his voice is cracking and he can't see through his tears: "I will get Strange to wipe your memory, if that’s, Tony, just–”

There’s nothing he can offer. There’s nothing he can do but kneel in the snow and spout promises that Tony can’t know are true. The damage is done and he’s going to be undoing it for the rest of his life.

Tony kneels, looks up in something like miserable supplication, his mouth contorted in a wretched sob. 

“I wouldn’t remember this,” he whimpers, like it’s some shameful admission.  

Steve throws out a hand and pitches forward onto his knees.  

“It’s your decision,” he says, blinding tears burning in his eyes, and this time it has to make it to Tony’s ears as a promise instead of a threat. “Whatever it is. I’m listening. I’m going to make up for what he did, if you – if you want me to. I’m going to prove it to you.”

He kneels, the freezing slush bleeding through his pants to his knees, watches Tony’s lovely eyes brim and spill with tears, watches the pink of his cheeks beneath the slick of his tears, and he can’t say it, even though he desperately wants to.

He can’t ask  _can I touch you_.

He holds a hand out, instead.

Tony tries to look, because he’s hopelessly brave, because he’s still trying, still, now, after everything, even shaking with sobs, he looks, he stares through to Steve’s heart, wide-eyed and destroyed, grimacing like he’s dying, pressing his eyes shut like he might find mercy there.

Steve brings his hand back to rest on his knee, slowly, no sudden movements, like it might never have left the warmth of his thigh. It crests and breaks in him, just like that.

It’s nothing, he tells himself. They’re not going to touch. They aren’t.  

It doesn’t hurt. It can’t.

Steve rises and turns away. Get them back, get them safe, get them –

“ _Steve_ ,” rasps Tony's savaged voice, and it's desperation and terror and exhaustion. 

It takes an instant for Steve to be back at his side, down in the freezing snow, his heart soaring to hear his name on Tony’s lips.

Tony looks at him.

"I need this to be real," Tony says, terribly, terribly quietly. 

Tony looks, and there’s warmth on Steve’s skin, there’s the itch of cotton gauze against Steve's frozen knuckles, because Tony has grabbed his hand, his face terrified and shocked at his own audacity, at something he's dredged up, sense memory that predated terror, that remembers warmth. 

Tony has grabbed his handand wrapped his mangled fingers around Steve's palm. 

“It’s real,” Steve chokes. “I’m real.”

Tony holds Steve’s hand with everything he has, every last broken ounce of strength in him, and Steve sobs, shakes with desperate, grateful tears, and holds back with his whole heart.

 

* * *

END PART II

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next thing I post won't be chapter 28, it'll be the K'arr'n story, but it will be roughly the length of a chapter, I'm hoping. Stand by.
> 
> Love your comments. Always love them. 
> 
> Thanks to Jess and Daniel for being eternally patient with me.
> 
> UPDATE: We're on Hiatus as of Jan 2015.
> 
> It will never be abandoned, basics of life and health are just a lot right now. More on my [tumblr.](kiyaar.tumblr.com) THERE IS AN ENTIRE THIRD PART TO THIS STORY TO COME. THIS IS NOT THE END OF THE STORY. Note the 27/?. Expect 40 chapters. Conservatively.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * ["Sins of Omission" fan art](https://archiveofourown.org/works/828491) by [NohaIjiachi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NohaIjiachi/pseuds/NohaIjiachi)
  * [[Fanart for Sins of Omission by Kiyaar] The Cave Scene](https://archiveofourown.org/works/924147) by [Yuuuukiko](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yuuuukiko/pseuds/Yuuuukiko)
  * [He's always there.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/986407) by [AuthorInDistress](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuthorInDistress/pseuds/AuthorInDistress)




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